51–58 of 58 posts
One of the many beauties of Framework laptops is that you don't have to take that decision and can mount the ports you want at anytime. Check them out. It's probably the best decision I have taken in terms of technology in years.
One of the many beauties of Framework laptops is that you don't have to take that decision and can mount the ports you want at anytime. Check them out. It's probably the best decision I have taken in terms of technology in years.
I bought a usbc monitor and run everything from there to the computer with one cable (power, video, keyboard). It’s fine I guess but I still carry a charger when I’m out, an hdmi adapter (most monitors you meet in the world are still hdmi) and a usb an adapter. (Printers). I used to carry an Ethernet adapter, but I only really used it for networking scanning and I don’t really take those contracts anymore.
All things being equal I’d choose the additional ports, but the primary reason to get rid of them is form factor. You can make the machine a lot smaller by removing ports. I don’t really give a crap about that since I carry the other stuff anyway but your mileage may vary. I like the framework idea I may switch to that next time.
Then again you’ll be running windows on it so the computer is ruined anyway so it doesn’t matter what you choose or what you spend.
Contrary opinion: USB-C sucks for any sort of demanding use case, especially video (i.e., gaming monitors). There are so many different versions and specs that all fit into one lookalike cable/connector but which will fail in various ways, usually at some combination of refresh rate, resolution, HDR, etc. HDMI is so much more reliable (though not without its issues) and DisplayPort is even better, though that's rare…
USB-C IS DisplayPort (among other things). You can get from USB-C to DP "passively", just by signalling the right thing to the USB-C port. The mode is called Alt-Mode and gives you DisplayPort and USB2 or USB3 speeds as a side channel (depending on the amount of bandwidth consumed by the DisplayPort stream). Barring that, some USB-C docks rely on a USB data stream (DisplayLink) and not a DisplayPort stream. Avoid the…
It's never plug-and-play, it's more like buy, return, buy, return, research, buy, scream, thrash, cry, and go back to HDMI/big DisplayPort in my experience.
I use USBC everywhere including my home office dock. The ease of plugging one cable to dock is great, it keeps the desk tidy and has excellent spousal approval factor. Most dongles are absolute crap, though. Caldigit is the only brand I trust.
Specific to the OP, my work laptop is plugged into one dock that manages power, ethernet, USB-A adapters, and 4k 30FPS HDMI. It also has an unused VGA, SD & Micro SD. It's a nice amount of functionality for only consuming one Thunderbolt-capable USB-C port.
Contrary opinion: USB-C sucks for any sort of demanding use case, especially video (i.e., gaming monitors). There are so many different versions and specs that all fit into one lookalike cable/connector but which will fail in various ways, usually at some combination of refresh rate, resolution, HDR, etc. HDMI is so much more reliable (though not without its issues) and DisplayPort is even better, though that's rare…
> Audio is probably fine... the standards there don't change as much. As long as you don't care about latency. For example, if you wind up with your 4K monitor sharing the same PCI-E lanes as your low latency audio device, you're in for a world of hurt. Note: the problem here isn't USB-C, per se, as much as the fact that a device over USB-C can request so much data that it can hog the backend bus enough to cause issu…
USB is not like Ethernet, in USB it is possible to reserve an amount of data transfer capacity for latency-sensitive applications like audio and then none of the other users of the USB interface can use it during the reserved time intervals.
If a USB audio device does not use this kind of data transfers with reserved bandwidth (isochronous transfer), its designers have been incompetent.
If the audio is transferred over DisplayPort or over HDMI, then there the time intervals for transferring it are reserved too, so it must not be influenced by anything that is transferred at the same time.
Problems with audio being perturbed by other transfers over PCIe, before reaching the USB controller or the GPU for audio over DisplayPort or HDMI, are unlikely to be caused by hardware but by the operating system, which might not give adequate priority to the audio transfers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Audio is probably fine... the standards there don't change as much. As long as you don't care about latency. For example, if you wind up with your 4K monitor sharing the same PCI-E lanes as your low latency audio device, you're in for a world of hurt. Note: the problem here isn't USB-C, per se, as much as the fact that a device over USB-C can request so much data that it can hog the backend bus enough to cause issu…
That probably happens, but if it happens it is due to bad implementations. USB is not like Ethernet, in USB it is possible to reserve an amount of data transfer capacity for latency-sensitive applications like audio and then none of the other users of the USB interface can use it during the reserved time intervals. If a USB audio device does not use this kind of data transfers with reserved bandwidth (isochronous tra…
Anyone can make a USB-C peripheral. Very few companies can make a GOOD one.
It doesn't matter what the on-paper specs are if 95% of real world applications are crap... the UX for consumers sucks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That probably happens, but if it happens it is due to bad implementations. USB is not like Ethernet, in USB it is possible to reserve an amount of data transfer capacity for latency-sensitive applications like audio and then none of the other users of the USB interface can use it during the reserved time intervals. If a USB audio device does not use this kind of data transfers with reserved bandwidth (isochronous tra…
Realistically though, isn't most of USB a race to the bottom with bad implementations being the norm, not the exception? USB-C is an especially tragic case of this, with shitty products outnumbering the good ones 100:1, fake reviews everywhere, insane standards with tiny differences, counterfeits, etc. Certifications like Thunderbolt can help but still aren't an absolute guarantee (like with my MacBook and expensive…
Blame Apple, not the docks.
I couldn't keep any USB-A peripheral connected to my MacBook Pro through any dongle or dock alive for more than about 30 minutes. I must have tried 6 or 7 docks and a dozen dongles. All of them would fail and I would have to reboot to get it back.
I could pinpoint the OS version upgrade that broke everything as I managed to have two MacBook Pros with different OS versions. The bug followed the OS version on restore. The thread on Apple support for it is HUGE. I even tried paid escalation. Nope.
That was the final straw the drove me off of Apple and onto Linux for my laptop full-time. At least with Linux I can figure out what the hell is going wrong. Maybe Apple is nicer, but if you aren't on what Apple regards as the pure happy path--"Here be Dragons".
Maybe the docks are bad, but I would put way more blame on Apple. macOS simply isn't getting the resources it really needs.