3 ms·

I would not argue that wired is more reliable in terms of connection. It’s just that if you’re working at a laptop then connection reliability competes with wea

I would not argue that wired is more reliable in terms of connection. It’s just that if you’re working at a laptop then connection reliability competes with wear and tear, ergonomics, and outlier scenarios like “trip on a cable and brick your work machine” (e.g., by spilling coffee or dropping it). In case of a desktop, connection reliability only competes with ergonomics, and to a much lesser extent—I can see myself using a wired keyboard at a desktop, perhaps even a split one (and that’s an additional wire). Anecdotally, I don’t tend to run into connection issues with wireless keyboards—I do with wireless mice, however.

stavros 3y ago
Hm, yeah, laptops are a bit difficult ergonomically. For me, just the hassle of "this is misbehaving again, is it the battery or interference?" is enough to prefer wired everything, but I get your point about wear and tear. Luckily, in USB-C, the springy bit is in the cable, so that's where the wear and tear is. If it stops working, the cable is generally easy to replace.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  I’ve had many similar issues with ports, to be honest. Just recently had to get the I/O board swapped on an M1 MBP—one day it decided that one of the USB ports wouldn’t connect 80% of the time. It was relatively inexpensive to do officially even without the warranty (around US$60 all in all), and took just a couple of days, to be fair.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Huh, maybe I'm an outlier. Maybe it's the way you remove your connectors? Some people tend to wiggle them side-to-side, I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis. That leads to the removing force vector pointing strictly straight out of the connector, and I've never had a problem with any port.
    - strogonoff 3y ago
      Past me was definitely careless. Current me—doubtful, or at least I’d like to think I’d have learned to be nicer to ports… > I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis This doesn’t work when you have two ports in close proximity and one of them is occupied. In that scenario I’d have to either lift the laptop in order to squeeze the connector from top & bottom while removing (this option requires not being exhausted or lazy) or pull on a cable a bit further away from the connector (though I do it gently nowadays, pushing with another finger against the chassis for at least some balance).

stavros 3y ago

Hm, yeah, laptops are a bit difficult ergonomically. For me, just the hassle of "this is misbehaving again, is it the battery or interference?" is enough to prefer wired everything, but I get your point about wear and tear. Luckily, in USB-C, the springy bit is in the cable, so that's where the wear and tear is. If it stops working, the cable is generally easy to replace.

strogonoff 3y ago
I’ve had many similar issues with ports, to be honest. Just recently had to get the I/O board swapped on an M1 MBP—one day it decided that one of the USB ports wouldn’t connect 80% of the time. It was relatively inexpensive to do officially even without the warranty (around US$60 all in all), and took just a couple of days, to be fair.
- stavros 3y ago
  Huh, maybe I'm an outlier. Maybe it's the way you remove your connectors? Some people tend to wiggle them side-to-side, I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis. That leads to the removing force vector pointing strictly straight out of the connector, and I've never had a problem with any port.
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    Past me was definitely careless. Current me—doubtful, or at least I’d like to think I’d have learned to be nicer to ports… > I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis This doesn’t work when you have two ports in close proximity and one of them is occupied. In that scenario I’d have to either lift the laptop in order to squeeze the connector from top & bottom while removing (this option requires not being exhausted or lazy) or pull on a cable a bit further away from the connector (though I do it gently nowadays, pushing with another finger against the chassis for at least some balance).