The European Union has officially imposed a new rule for selling laptops with a power rating of 100 W or less, requiring them to use a USB-C port for charging. This rule takes effect today, April 28, Tuesday, as the European Commission has been exploring ways to reduce electronic waste and has been ...
I’ve always seen that as a bit of a problem actually. You lose a port when you are charging. I’d rather have the USB port for some peripheral and a dedicated power connection.
In this case many modern laptops (if not all) support or are sold with a docking station. You got your block that has all the needed ports with one specific port for PD that will accept charge.
From what I’ve heard of people using docking station - it is super convenient. You just bring your laptop to home/work and connect 1 USB-C and you got all the devices already connected to it. Unplug and leave only with laptop.On the go, barely anyone uses many ports.
I highly doubt that people are willing to take tons of hardware on their travel. Keyboard, mouse and a screen is already there. You do not need any audio interfaces, printers, Ethernet cables, microphones, additional monitors, many USB flash drives or wireless charger stations for your phones/watch/headphones when you’re on the go. You just need laptop and maybe wired headphones.
USB-C connector is just an ability to get a charging cable anywhere regardless of laptop’s brand, model, barrel charger polarity or wattage. 1 USB power block, 1 type-C cable is all it needs. And these things are extremely common. Not like some Acer Aspire laptop’s super rare double voltage proprietary connector power block that can be only ordered off their company’s website.
There are extremely cheap dongles that split data from power. They work with most phones, too.
With a barrel jack you’d probably lose room for another USB-C. There is really no reason to prefer USB-C over a jack.
It makes a lot more sense for portable devices. The idea of a desktop PC that’s nothing but usb-c front and back seems silly. However, my work laptop connects via usb-c to the docking station and that’s pretty awesome. Through the usb-c ports I get multiple monitors, power, ethernet, audio, and of course peripherals and storage and other USB devices.
TLDR; it seems pretty silly to put in a dedicated plug to avoid using one of the other plugs rather than just adding another one of the other plugs. I think this is a cup half full versus half empty problem rather than a real problem.
The same way you do when you take one of those ports and make it only charge. Now I could have had another port that does data And charging, but instead they made it Only charge. All this does is take away your agency to use the ports however you choose.
It’s just a matter of perspective whether they gave you an extra port that also charges or they took away a port that only charged.
Plugging in two cables when you get to a workstation is less preferable than plugging in one cable. So, the charging port must also carry data or the data ports must also be capable of charging.
The same goes for monitors, phones, and most other electronic devices. We don’t want to have to plug in another cable and carry two or more cables just to be able to charge it and use it for what it’s for. Therefore at least one of those plugs must serve both purposes. Once one of those plugs serves both purposes why not just add more plugs that serve every purpose so you have enough and you decrease the costs associated with having many distinct solutions rather than more of the same solution.
I think, if you have a problem with not enough data plugs when you’re charging then you should get a laptop with more plugs, not kneecap the functionality of some of your plugs so you “don’t lose one when you plug in power”
I have a Framework 16. It has something like four usb-c ports that can charge and carry full-spec data, then another two that are restricted in data and can’t charge the laptop (six total, three on each side). Never have I run into “oh darn if I could only unplug the power then I could plug in one more thing”. But I frequently get to a desk at home or at work and want to plug in one cable and have everything connected. I also frequently want to plug the laptop into power on the other side. Also, if that did ever happen, because all the plugs do everything I am free to get a dongle and plug it in to the power plug and then charge through the dongle while also using all the data lanes.