I had to upgrade my tech at the start of lockdown for Zoom meetings and so on. The online reviews said it only had three USB ports, it turns out it only has two.
So I bought two 4-into-1 USB ports for £12 each and now have 8, which is plenty, I don't need to unplug one thing to plug in something else. But it looks a right mess.
The question is, it can't cost more than £10 to make a computer which had eight or ten USBs to start with, so why don't they? If they'd offered two otherwise identical PCs, one with two and one with ten USBs, then I would have happily paid an extra £30 or £40 for the one with ten USBs, just because it's tidier and more convenient. Everybody's happy.
The round black thing with the green light is the one-off and volume control for the excellent Logitech speakers which I had to buy (for about £50) because the inbuilt ones are crap, fair enough, it's a very small box (that's it in the picture) with no room for proper speakers. I can see the commercial logic of that.
Saturday, 15 August 2020
What's the point of making a computer with only two USB ports?
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31 comments:
I remember my first pc with usbs - it had two. I thought that's fine, I'll never need more than two . . . .
DCB, it's amazing what we could make do with. And how our expectations go up at least as fast as they can invent new stuff.
Look at it this way there is no need to make the computer price unattractive to people who do not want more than 2 when the people who want more can get a 4 into one at the supermarket. £10 is a huge bill for an item on the bill of manufacturing. Maybe one eighth of the whole bill. £80. Consider that you can get a mid performance laptop for £290 including delivery. Take away vat, delivery, marketing, transaction fees, a profit for the manufacturing element.
Din, surely it is cheaper to make a PC with 8 USBs than it is to make a PC with 2 USBs and then for somebody else to make two extra bits with cables, housing and a dinky LED?
PC cost £500 retail (it's really good apart from that, it's got camera and everything), 2 x 4-USB extenders £12 each retail = £524.
I'd have happily paid more than £524 retail for a PC with 8 USBs instead of 2. Which must mean extra net profit for the PC manufacturer.
But what if other people only want 2 USBs? You are making them pay for extra USBs that they don't want or need.
Got to ask - desktop or laptop?
If desktop,then I don't understand how you managed to buy a machine with only two ports.
KJP, I wrote "If they'd offered two otherwise identical PCs, one with two and one with ten USBs, then I would have happily paid an extra £30 or £40 for the one with ten USBs, just because it's tidier and more convenient. Everybody's happy."
AC, desktop, I can't abide laptops. It's a Lenovo all-in-one, as you can see in the picture. The screen is permanently mounted on a stick with a swivel mechanism. Why do they only have two USBs? That is the question.
If only there was some way of connecting devices to the computer without using wires. A "wireless" connection so to speak. Then it wouldn't matter how many USB ports a computer had...
Dereks comment is part of the answer. Everyone has blue tooth mouse now
And so one for a printer and one for memory stick equals two.
D and D, most things work better when actually plugged in. The PC came with a wireless keyboard and mouse connected to one USB but they were crap and I ended up plugging in bog standard £15 keyboard and £5 mouse from my previous PC.
Din, I have no idea what a BT interface is, I don't want to know, and I don't want to have anything to do with BT (long held grudge of mine).
Laptops have the BT interface on the motherboard are you saying the Lenovo Desktop does not.
If a usb adds just another £2 it will still put the pc lower in a list of low to high.
This is the same as the age old adage of accountants removing nuts and bolts from cars.
BT = blue tooth , handy for moving pics and files between phone and PC.
It's about space - USB ports take up a lot of it in today's slim laptops. My new laptop doesn't even have a DVD drive.
Look into getting a docking station instead. One thing to plug in to, it then has dual monitors, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc connected
What mombers said. Space rather than cost. And even if there's a large enough gap for 2 ports, you have to remember all the required internals.
I agree particularly if you use a USB keyboard and mouse.
Din, ta.
M, TS. yes, space is limited on lap tops, but the USBs on this one are at the side edge of the screen, there is plenty of space. I could glue the two external ports on quite easily.
And no, there was no CD drive with this either, maybe that's not an essential any more, not a problem as I had an external £40 CD drive left over from a previous computer.
LF, ta.
MW, if there's plenty of space for more USB ports, wouldn't the laptop just be made smaller? Size and weight of laptops is a big selling point, can't see any manufacturer leaving an unnecessarily empty space inside
M, the main driver with lap tops is screen size. People appear to like larger screens and the keyboard half is just the same size.
Laptops are supposed to be portable, so you shouldn't be plugging in loads of extra stuff anyway.
But the one I bought is a desk top, those arguments don't apply.
Ah, right. The All-in-one designs share an awful lot of design decisions with laptops - certainly the ones that I have actually had apart over the years used laptop motherboards.
And one of those decisions is to utilise several of the six to eight ports provided by the controller internally, leaving only a few to be broken out externally.
So if you wanted more ports available on the system unit itself, then buy a box in a more traditional form factor. Although I think that may be Dell have an all-in-one that has a number of ports available on the back of the monitor.
AC, yes, but before I did a quick survey i.e. I asked Her Indoors "What kind of computer do you have and are you happy with it?".
She replied "Lenovo, yes" so I read a couple of online reviews and bought one. I like the small all-in-one box that is attached to the screen and doubles up as base/stand.
All the box has is the power supply and an on-switch, the USBs and head phone socket are at the back of the screen and the camera slides down when you aren't using it.
The missing USBs problem is easily solved, it just seems a bit pointless, especially as I now have 10 USBs of which I can only use 8.
Ah it's a desktop, my mistake. Is the box under the monitor the whole machine though? It's pretty small so I'm guessing it's quite crammed inside. 3 ports would be a more sensible number - keyboard, mouse and one spare. On my laptop I need to plug these in and a headset so two would be a pain
Personally, never been that convinced by the all-in-one concept - there seem to be too many trade-offs limiting flexibility, except at the high-end where the premium just for the form factor becomes way too significant.
And I tend to pay up for a decent monitor and mechanical keyboard anyway, so only interested in buying the system unit by itself. Mind you, one of those has three ports at the front, and another six round the back, which seems a little excessive, as I tend to use Bluetooth for speaker and microphone connections when I have to.
M, yes, the black box is the whole thing. Crammed full of stuff, so the USBs, headphone socket plus some other slot thingy (I have no idea what is is) are on the back of the screen.
AC, my old PC didn't have camera or mike. My first attempt was buy a £20 camera, but quality was rubbish, I then tried plugging in an old mike, still rubbish.
Then I buggered up some setting or other and couldn't log in to work. So I just saved all the hassle and bought the Lenovo - Her Indoors does conf calls and Zoom meetings all day long on hers and she was perfectly happy with it, and so am I. I'm not into "high end", if it will do, it will do. And this set up is fine for me.
Her Indoors uses the screen from my old PC as a second screen, and she intends to use the wireless keyboard and mouse left over from my new one, so we've minimised waste. The only bit I can chuck away is the old box.
Off topic I’m afraid. Just to say that our dear colleague and friend Radders has departed to do some investigating the other side of the River Styx. More as it comes to hand.
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2020/08/sad-news-death-of-raedwald.html
You dont know about USB C then?
JH, oh dear, sorry to hear that.
RS, no and I don't need to know. They keep inventing new cables and new connectors so that we have to keep buying replacements.
On a similar topic why does my car have 9 speeds in its auto gearbox when it only really needs five or at best 6??
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