So a couple of years from now PCs could just have USB Type-C ports. For USB obviously, for power and video as seen on the new MacBook, for even very high-end video such as 4k as you can now do with DisplayPort, for external hard drives with its 100W power budget. 40Gbps means you can attach pretty much anything, even external GPUs.
Type-C was going to do well anyway: it’s just a much better, more flexible USB. But this means it could replace pretty much every wired connector, certainly on laptops and mobile devices where space is at a premium. Such devices can be built with Type-C ports that auto-detect the device type and auto-configure themselves for it. As it’s from Intel it will probably appear in their chipsets very soon, for PC makers to include with very little effort on their part.
Certainly not all GPUs – the article notes that the 100W power it supplies as more of a constraint. But for less powerful ones, in situations where expanding your desktop is more important than polygon throughput. This is already possible with USB:
There’s probably much less need for these now, with laptops routinely including video out ports, desktops routinely having two of them, and displays larger and cheaper. But it would be an option, to add a third display to a PC with direct support for only two for example.
pogo wrote:
There’s probably much less need for these now, with laptops routinely including video out ports, desktops routinely having two of them, and displays larger and cheaper. But it would be an option, to add a third display to a PC with direct support for only two for example.
I need to work all over the place and my thin/light laptop can run all my work needs. And it docks nicely with a couple of large monitors. But it can't game.
I'd love to be able to sit at a desk and plug it into a decent gaming card rather than have another PC under the desk.
But surely most of what makes a PC case big and noisy is the GPU. There's little to be saved in abstracting the CPU and keyboard and mouse interfaces out to a laptop. You might as well have a PC so you needn't get your laptop out of its bag to use it.
gumboot wrote:But surely most of what makes a PC case big and noisy is the GPU. There's little to be saved in abstracting the CPU and keyboard and mouse interfaces out to a laptop. You might as well have a PC so you needn't get your laptop out of its bag to use it.
My laptop is always out of my bag. It's my main PC.
I work 60% at the office, 10% at my home office and 25% at any one of 30 client sites and 5% doing sales presentations.
I have multiple VMs on the laptop and it's just much easier to dock my laptop at home and work than have multiple computers and try and sync between them.
I also have an uber gaming PC at the office, but because there isn't a good seamless way to switch between my laptop dock/multiple monitor setup I barely turn it on. Now if I had a GPU plugged into my dock that would be great.
Obviously I'm not the average user, so I'm sure it's not a need for most.
I keep hearing people get excited whenever they find out something's going to include USB-C. And I totally get it, one common connector seems like a great idea. But man alive am I fucked off with it. I thought HDMI was annoying enough but USB-C tops it by quite a margin.
So the premise: 1 connector, can be used for video, data or power. Sometimes all three at the same time. But it's broken, and badly, thanks to the lack of regulation about labelling the fucking cables.
Because even at the point of purchase there's no way to tell what you've actually bought. Manufacturers get away with reporting things as "high speed" but there are no standards over what that means. From experience it could be anything from USB 2.0 right up to Thunderbolt. But there's no way to guarantee it until it arrives. And, when it does arrive there's no labelling on the cable meaning if it ever gets dumped in the "big drawer of electric string" you've got no way of figuring out if you're about to be using the right cable for the right job.
Then there's the issue of "how fucking thick do people think these cables need to be?". There used to be a time when you could use a wireless charger whilst it was charging, thanks to the dainty weights of mini and micro USB cables. Now you're stuck with a nigh-on kettle lead. Except for Apple charging cables, bizarrely.
The connector being double-sided is great, but why does the sheath have to be so deep/long? The leverage that causes means controllers and especially VR headsets get unbalanced AF. Finding a right-angled cable that could accommodate the power & data needs of VR headset like the Quest 2 was far more of a headache than it should have been.
As of the next round of phones it seems Apple's finally agreeing on one common charger type, in USB-C. Which is great until you realise they'll only allow "Made For iPhone" (MFi) cables. Meaning they get to deny basic features like charging and data transfer to anybody who might happen to have a spare cable or two laying around. Well done, Apple. Talk about aligning with the letter of the law rather than the spirit. Way to go in helping everyone buy fewer cables, twats
Grrrr. It all seemed so promising before people went and fucked it all up
I keep hearing people get excited whenever they find out something's going to include USB-C. And I totally get it, one common connector seems like a great idea. But man alive am I fucked off with it. I thought HDMI was annoying enough but USB-C tops it by quite a margin.
So the premise: 1 connector, can be used for video, data or power. Sometimes all three at the same time. But it's broken, and badly, thanks to the lack of regulation about labelling the fucking cables.
Because even at the point of purchase there's no way to tell what you've actually bought. Manufacturers get away with reporting things as "high speed" but there are no standards over what that means. From experience it could be anything from USB 2.0 right up to Thunderbolt. But there's no way to guarantee it until it arrives. And, when it does arrive there's no labelling on the cable meaning if it ever gets dumped in the "big drawer of electric string" you've got no way of figuring out if you're about to be using the right cable for the right job.
Then there's the issue of "how fucking thick do people think these cables need to be?". There used to be a time when you could use a wireless charger whilst it was charging, thanks to the dainty weights of mini and micro USB cables. Now you're stuck with a nigh-on kettle lead. Except for Apple charging cables, bizarrely.
The connector being double-sided is great, but why does the sheath have to be so deep/long? The leverage that causes means controllers and especially VR headsets get unbalanced AF. Finding a right-angled cable that could accommodate the power & data needs of VR headset like the Quest 2 was far more of a headache than it should have been.
As of the next round of phones it seems Apple's finally agreeing on one common charger type, in USB-C. Which is great until you realise they'll only allow "Made For iPhone" (MFi) cables. Meaning they get to deny basic features like charging and data transfer to anybody who might happen to have a spare cable or two laying around. Well done, Apple. Talk about aligning with the letter of the law rather than the spirit. Way to go in helping everyone buy fewer cables, twats
Grrrr. It all seemed so promising before people went and fucked it all up
Insert XKCD "standards" cartoon here
I over Xmas I met a karaoke portable that wanted a USB A on its end for charging (i.e. you needed a USB A to USB A cable before you could use it, luckily (I loathe the idea of karaoke)).
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
The biggest problem I've found with USB-C is also with the deep connector, but specifically that fluff tends to compact into it over time, and then you don't get a good connection, and it's almost impossible to clean out (had some success using a SIM card ejection tool, but one day I'm sure I'll damage something doing it...)
Yep annoying with my MacBook pro trying to find a USB C monitor - I thought before I looked properly they would all do sound, data, power - Nope a whole mix of power deliveries at different rates or even non-power deliveries - I thought the point of a standard was it was a standard ?
Whiteball wrote:The trouble with these 'standards' (HDMI is the same) a lot of the so called benefits/features are entirely optional.
That happens when the "standard" becomes a marketting tool for the sellers, not a standard. There are a lot of substandard "standard"s about these days.
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
