So you bought a new laptop... Really cool...

SWEAR TO GOD

Dongles everywhere is ridiculous

When human robotic improvement would be a thing and we figure out how to exchange human shit into power I suppose most of people would have usb dongle integrated with their ass.

XPS 13. Also, why so much adapters. You can get lirerally 1 adapter with everything you need.
Or buy a dock

Welcome to the dungle!

@sigfried That dock station is bigger than intel nuc 🌝

Fixed

@QAgMire These docking stations still exist and are a bliss. Just slam your laptop on the dock and everything's just dandy.
However, they basically only exist for business notebooks, as that's their main use case.
We have ThinkPad T570 at the office and each desk has one of those slam-and-work docking stations

@gathurian I feel like there would be a lot of repairs if everyone was literally "slamming" their laptops onto their docking stations 😂

Hey I recognize that... We got pretty much that exact same thing for a college laptop.
Mind you, this was after we got the same laptops as civil engineers. 1 thunderbolt, 3 usb, 2 hdmi, small nvidia graphics card, and good battery life got swapped out to a 2 tbolt, 2 usb, 1 hdmi, integrated intel graphics, mediocre battery life 2-in-1 with a semi-responsive keyboard, slightly better processor, a smaller screen, and a fan that sounds like a jet taking off whenever you open Chrome or any IDE.
And at the same exact price.

Yeah, you are right, I need a docking station. However I already had at home 2/3 of those adapters, so this solution was cheaper. In any case, I really miss old-school laptops with all the fucking ports on them.

@QAgMire I've recently acquired an old HP business laptop, opened up its docking station, and the springy things in it quickly nuked the screw threads that were holding them in. I can't believe that HP made something so shitty - for a business laptop nonetheless! - and I ended up raging away on it after the last thread that kept it in a usable state broke off. Boy did that feel satisfactory.

The problem with the proprietary connector now is, I can't replace the fucking thing, and even if I could, I'd only be able to get the same shitty dock. Universal standards allow for interchangeability and competition between manufacturers, an inherently good thing. Docking stations are great, but they need a universal connector. USB-C would be great for this, as it could be sticking out of the dock and allow the laptop to get it stuck into a socket at the bottom. The issue however could be that manufacturers might place their socket at their own desired place rather than at a standardized location.. just like it seems/seemed to be with phones 😕

Fortunately phone manufacturers are starting to put the socket at the center on the bottom of the phones so that's a good thing. Laptop manufacturers should take note of this!

And this is why I dislike all new shiny laptops which marketing is basicly "look I'm so thin!" Fk you. I want my ports and not 100 adapters and cooling issues <.<