7 ms·

Why stop at mobile phones? Is there a reason laptops need so many different connectors? I am willing to bet many random connectors are just planned obsolescence

• toast0 7y ago
  > Any reason laptop displays can't internally have a rather standardised connector? Don't they? I thought LVDS was nearly universal for a long time. Didn't mean you could always swap panels though, resolution and timing needed to be supported, even when the screen physically connected. I've seen boards for sale to add external vga/dvi to old panels, but ultimately did not buy any. I think there may be some movement towards internal display port, too.
  • dogma1138 7y ago
    eDP is quite common these days especially in laptops with elaborate hinges that have 4K screen options. LVDS requires 40 differential signaling pairs for displaying 4K resolution, eDP requires only 4 and even that can be reduces to 2 if DSC is used or your display adapter and panel support HBR3. However for LVDS and eDP the physical connectors can be drastically different but in all honesty this has very much to do with the physical design of the laptop rather than some anti consumer conspiracy. Depending on the hinge mechanism, the wiring length as well as other factors such as does the same cable need also to support power, USB (camera) and audio (microphone) connectivity you get different designs.
• yostrovs 7y ago
  Let's take this further still. Why not mandate identical car tire sizes, having the fuel door in the same spot on every car, all the controls inside the car be universal... How about actually just making one car that embodies every European's needs?
  • andai 7y ago
    You mean, one public transport :)
  • gambiting 7y ago
    You can argue that there is an actual practical reason for things like different tyre sizes. There is no practical reason for having slightly different barrel connectors on different laptops that makes them all incompatible.
    • sokoloff 7y ago
      Different barrel jacks and adapters on different products have different voltages, sometimes different polarities, some are AC, some are DC. Some laptops have different voltage batteries that each "prefer" a different optimal voltage for building the on-board charger. This is a close analogy IMO to different sized tires on autos/trucks. Many companies would be happy to standardize, so long as everyone else changed and they got to be the de facto/de jure standard. Bonus points if they held a royalty-generating license on the connector/communications standard.
  • selectnull 7y ago
    When I visit a friend, it is very convenient to be able to charge my phone without having my own charger with me and just use theirs. At the same time, I park my car and don't care to look for compatible parking space. As for tires, I don't even know nor care what sizes they are but I'm glad the air pistons are the same across all makers/brands/sizes so I don't worry I have to go to the right fuel station to check my air pressure. Right?
  • seszett 7y ago
    Car tyres have standardised valves and fuel inlets are also standardised, and those two things are the exact equivalents to a mobile phone charging port. Car controls are obviously universal as well, so I'm not sure what your point actually is.
    • yostrovs 7y ago
• herendin2 7y ago
  It's not a terrible idea. There are technical, business and regulatory reasons why that could be more difficult than you expect, but ultimately consumers have to want it, and to want it, they have to understand it, which is the greatest problem.
  • clarry 7y ago
    Even if consumers wanted it, it does nothing as long as they are not given the choice. They buy what's available, which is often only in part what they want.
• gambiting 7y ago
  Well, at least one reason for different connectors is the fact that USB-C cannot support more than 100W(20V at 5amps). But I agree that literally every single laptop on the market that's below 100W should just use USB-C for charging.
  • alperakgun 7y ago
    For laptops there's a true cacophony when it comes to connectors. I hope USB-C meets requirements for most laptops/CPU/GPU configurations.
    • ForHackernews 7y ago
      Modern Macbooks and Thinkpads are both USB-C, so it looks like things are moving in that direction.
  • guilamu 7y ago
    95 % of laptops have less than 100W chargers.
    • agumonkey 7y ago
      I don't even expect more than 60W chargers ..
      • martin_a 7y ago
        My retired W520 got a 170 W one. So, they're out there. But probably only a few.
        • Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
          My gaming laptop is 180w
        • voqv 7y ago
          There's a 230W charger for use with current Thinkpad workstations, it's an absolute unit. [1] [1] https://i.redd.it/5ln51upcv8w21.jpg https://i.redd.it/5ln51upcv8w21.jpg
• Kuinox 7y ago
  Some brand get the same connectors, and it's been for years, for example, dell has the same big connector for laptops, and a smaller one for ultrabooks. They are switching to usb-c charging, but keep their old connector. Laptop displays have already a standardised connector it just need an LCD controller! https://www.amazon.fr/s?k=LCD+controller https://www.amazon.fr/s?k=LCD+controller So yes, you are throwing perfectly fine laptop screen when you could have used them as external screens.
  • agumonkey 7y ago
    I wonder if TV lcd panels also have some kind of standard or if it's completely random
    • berbec 7y ago
      For many, you can ressurecg a dead lcd TV with a HDMI to lvds adapter from eBay. You just need the exact panel and some time on AliExpress
  • fierarul 7y ago
    > Laptop displays have already a standardised connector it just need an LCD controller! https://www.amazon.fr/s?k=LCD+controller https://www.amazon.fr/s?k=LCD+controller > So yes, you are throwing perfectly fine laptop screen when you could have used them as external screens. What I had in mind was more of a 'monitor stand' with the wiring where you just connect / slide into the laptop screen and voila you have some new small external display. I'm not really certain right now just looking at those boards which one would fit to an old broken laptop but I understand these are not targeted newbies.
• Shivetya 7y ago
  it really should be filtered out by the wattage requirement. I have more than one flashlight that supports recharging and they all have different barrel connectors. so either get the devices by size class, or allow a micro connector for smaller devices, but sort them wattage/amp needs
• sokoloff 7y ago
  If we’d introduced this 20 years ago, think about how much e-waste we could have avoided. Also think about your screen would look at analog signal 1280x1024, because that would likely be the limit of the standard connector chosen at the time.
  • csharptwdec19 7y ago
    Ehhh, we had DVI in 1999. That gave us slightly-better-than 1080p@60hz over a single link and slightly-better-than 1440p@60hz over a dual link.
  • o-__-o 7y ago
    I used to run 1600x1200 on my VGA monitors 20 years ago.
• garaetjjte 7y ago
  >Any reason laptop displays can't internally have a rather standardised connector They usually already do, eDP (Embedded DisplayPort).
• krzyk 7y ago
  They at least push not only for mobiles: > A common charger should fit all mobile phones, tablets, e-book readers and other portable devices, MEPs will insist. I'm really happy to see e-book readers, I hate that I need to have micro-usb just for my kindle (my phone and laptop use USB-C).
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  IMHO everything that can be safely and reliably powered via a USB cable (of whatever a relevant standard connector type) should be powered that way nowadays (with exception of PoE and other cases where a non-USB power supply actually adds significant value for the consumer). An unpleasant surprise I have recently experienced was a Nintendo Switch refusing to connect to an HDMI TV without being attached to a Nintendo brand charger. I can hardly believe rendering to HDMI increases power consumption so much that this is necessary and there are no standard-conformant 3-rd party chargers which can handle that. IMHO such practices should be outlawed.
  • qqii 7y ago
    DC jacks still have their use, especially in simpler devices. The complexities USB PD specification doesn't make that much sense to impliment in say an electric drill.
    • qwerty456127 7y ago
      That qualifies as significant value for the consumer - making the device notably (relatively to the price of the rest of its parts) cheaper to produce and easier to repair. In just so many cases using a proprietary DC jack (like in my Dell laptop) decreases the value by forcing you to carry around your PSU wherever you go and buying overpriced replacements every now and then. The same applies to batteries - having a single (or some) standard for easily replaceable Li-Ion blocks would increase the value a lot.
  • johnwalkr 7y ago
    Power consumption increases a lot for better graphics quality, depending on the game. And while I think it’s true that the switch is non-compliant or at least strange, it generally works if the power supply can provide 15V (somewhat uncommon).
  • kyriakos 7y ago
    It's actually a different story with the Switch. Apparently it doesn't follow the USB specification correctly which means if you use a charger with higher power output than the expected it damages its battery whereas if the spec was followed the device negotiates it's power requirements with the charger and avoids any damage.
• dogma1138 7y ago
  Because laptop monitors were traditionally driven through a direct LVDS signal, you can buy an adapter but it would cost much more than $20... So the question is why would you want a $100> worth of extra logic in a laptop that only a fraction of the population would use, this seems to be even stupid from an environmental perspective since you are increasing e-waste not reducing it.
• ken 7y ago
  Why stop at computers? Dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, and every other power tool uses its own proprietary battery connector. Why stop at DC power? Last I checked, Germany, France, England, Italy, and many of the smaller countries all had their own AC power connectors. Why stop at hardware? iMessage, Hangouts, Messenger, Slack, and all the rest use their own proprietary interfaces. I still can't even save "a spreadsheet" in one program and reliably open it in another. I can put any bit in any drill, and any blade in any saw, but as soon as electricity gets involved, everything gets stupid. A lot of programmers say they're interested in "visualization", but visualization was the default state of the world before electrons got involved. Most programmers use the invisible nature of software to disguise the proprietary and incompatible interfaces they're creating. I hear a lot of developers complain about how their Mac laptop is no longer expandable or upgradeable, and then they turn around and use it to write a web app which uses a custom client-server interface with no public API or import/export. An industry is only anti-consumer when I'm the consumer.
  • wang_li 7y ago
    > iMessage, Hangouts, Messenger, Slack, and all the rest use their own proprietary interfaces. For a certain core level of functionality, there should be regulations and laws in place that these apps all support a public and open protocol. They can have their own, but I should be able to use imessage to send an IM to skype on the desktop. This is no different than requiring standard signalling on the wires during the era of landlines. > I still can't even save "a spreadsheet" in one program and reliably open it in another. This becomes more difficult when a spreadsheet could be the latest version of excel v. a hobby project on github. Though I expect the vast majority of spreadsheet applications will export a csv.
    • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      I spent 8 years in a 'startup' trying to make collaboration into a service. Couldn't get any traction. The idea of always-on collaboration services was hard for folks. They would launch the service, have a 1-hour meeting, and kill the service. With no expectation of available clients it was hard to market APIs to talk with non-existant clients. Sigh.
• _Microft 7y ago
  Another example: I have an electric razor which takes up to 1A at 5V (DC). Sounds perfect for a USB charger, right? It does not have a USB connector but a proprietary thing. The one with the USB connector is labelled travel razor and costs 20 € more. It's outrageous because most likely the USB connector is even cheaper than the other because it is produced in much higher numbers. If the charger dies before the machine itself, I will modify the cable and see how well that works.
  • thesmok 7y ago
    A watertight USB connector is more expensive than just two pins molded in-place through the plastic.
• jononor 7y ago
  eDP (Embedded DisplayPort) is becoming more and more popular for laptop screens. It has 2-3 different connectors for different resolutions, but much more standardized than before.