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New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

pcworld.com

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Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#131

Post by KptMarchewa »

y4mi wrote: post #125
suvelx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's supported is indeed a mess... I recently moved my desk between rooms. After setting everything up only one monitor seemed to work. Tried multiple DP cables plugged things in and out with things in various state of power. Eventually gave up and chalked it up to karma and either having a dead monitor or dead dock. Unplugged my laptop to go work in the lounge for a bit, came back later and plugged it in again ama…

I've never seen a laptop that didn't label the thunderbolt capable ports, are you sure that wasn't just you not paying attention? Or do you honestly expect all ports to be thunderbolt capable? If so, you'd have to expect a massive increase in price for that

Does not seem to be that expensive.

https://frame.work/

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#132

Post by ClumsyPilot »

sokoloff wrote: post #123
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"maybe with slightly different sizes to denote current capability" That's what we had - 10 invonpatiable barrel-jack charging connectors. At a friend's place and want to use his charge? Tough luck. Congratulations. Why do you need supplies with different current to be incompatiable?

In a 20V DC barrel jack case, so you don’t plug in a device with 4 ohms of resistance to a $2.99 charger spec’d (and only capable) to only deliver 20W of power. (Realistically, not every one of those chargers will have a current limiting supply inside.)

I think you've rebutted your own point there, laptops cost hunders or thousands, whats with $2.99 power supply? You spill coffee on the laptop and the power brick burns your house down?

I shorted many laptop power supplies while using them to test LED's strips, all of them seemed to have current limiting.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#133

Post by neither_color »

morsch wrote: post #93
lozenge wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2m cable with 100W charging (the highest currently, but not for long) and video using Thunderbolt 3 is £70 inc sales tax, it's also stiffer and heavier than other cables. How many of those do you plan to just have lying around for convenience? My XPS 15 already takes more power than that so has its own charger with a physical USB C connector (but also accepts standard USB C chargers with lower wattage). The next ve…

I can find cables claiming the same spec (100W, TB3, 2m) for 20-30 EUR. Less if you drop the length requirement -- 2m seems quite long, especially if you're using TB3 to connect a laptop to a display. I agree that there's a place for lower-spec cables that are cheaper and thinner.

I use a 12 foot USB-C cable(~3.5 meters) for my VR headset as it has to be long enough to allow me to flail about while streaming PCVR.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#135

Post by a9h74j »

The new logos show the word 'certified'. Wait for the "super-certified" and "ultra-certified" USB logo variants in two years, to help clear up the newly-latent confusion.

One new logo shows the word 'charger'. Wait for the "super-charger" and "ultra-charger" and "really really a charger" variants in three years, to help clear up that newly-latent confusion.

Leibnitz had a hypothesis that all one needed was one base word, with all possible meanings to be encoded by diacritics. USB tells us we only need one logo for all backplanes-in-a-cable, with all possible variants to be flagged by graphical diacritics. Reincarnation gone wrong.

I am waiting for UUU cables -- Ultra Universal USB. "We have both kinds of religion: universalist and unitarian."

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#136

Post by ziml77 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #129

I hate it how we went from simple, to simpler to totally complicated regarding computer ports. "Back in the days", it was a bunch of different ports of different sizes and shapes, and each thing had its own cable that fit into that thing only, and into only port only on the back of the pc. Yes, you needed 20 cables, but things were simple. Then came the USB... one cable, one protocol for all.... except video (firewir…

It was absolutely not that simple. You could easily destroy a device if you only went by the fit of the connector. There wasn't even a guarantee that 2 cables with the same ends were compatible since you had both straight through cables and crossover cables.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#137

Post by simon1573 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #129

I hate it how we went from simple, to simpler to totally complicated regarding computer ports. "Back in the days", it was a bunch of different ports of different sizes and shapes, and each thing had its own cable that fit into that thing only, and into only port only on the back of the pc. Yes, you needed 20 cables, but things were simple. Then came the USB... one cable, one protocol for all.... except video (firewir…

"Back in the days" you would either buy an original charger, which the store probably wouldn't have in stock, or buy one of those universal charger with a dozen plugs in which case you would have to be careful to pick a powerful enough charger anyway. You would also have to be very careful to pick a charger with the correct voltage.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#138

Post by jdhn »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #110
hbosch wrote: post #39

Please, for the love of god, make it obvious if a USB C cable can be used as a display cable or not. One thing that absolutely blows about USB C is that they all look the same, but to connect my LG UltraFine to my GTX 2070 I had to do literally hours of research before I could find a reliable cable on Amazon that was a “bidirectional USB C DisplayPort” cable because I naively assumed that USB C was a general purpose…

> Why can’t all USB C cables just do all the things? I'd guess 'cost'.

What's the difference in cost between a cable that can do the bare minimum, and a cable that can do everything, assuming they're the same length? Just seems like the USB committee is unnecessarily complicating everything.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#139

Post by toper-centage »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #129

I hate it how we went from simple, to simpler to totally complicated regarding computer ports. "Back in the days", it was a bunch of different ports of different sizes and shapes, and each thing had its own cable that fit into that thing only, and into only port only on the back of the pc. Yes, you needed 20 cables, but things were simple. Then came the USB... one cable, one protocol for all.... except video (firewir…

I think we're in a troubled phase of the transition to a truly universal port. I believe soon enough most cables and charging, bricks, and devices, will start to be more versatile and also better labeled. At this point companies are still transitioning and people still don't understand the concept so we'll either. Maybe we need something like color coding in cables, similar to the color strips in resistors. We definitely need some way to know what a cable supports after the label is long gone. With that said, I still prefer the current situation where I can charge my laptop and my phone with the same cable and charger, and the same port can be used to video out.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#140

Post by nerdponx »

gspr wrote: post #121
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, e.g. in France they use Go (giga-octet) instead of GB (and analogously, Ko/Mo/To).

A French octet is a byte . The b here is a bit.

I really like the idea of having distinct abbreviations for bytes/octets and bits!
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