Comment by sandworm101
1 day ago
Yup. I have a work laptop that is meant to charge via USB ... But only one of the two ports will charge ... They are right beside each other! An evil trick at the office is to move someone's USB cable from one port to the other.
I find this immensely frustrating.
My work laptop (HP ZBook Studio 16 G11 - the current model) will will only charge from the USB C ports on the left side, not the right side. Unfortunately, that is low down my list of charging complaints for that laptop. It will not charge from USB C unless it is given a power supply that is at least 100W, even if it then only draws a fraction of that.
There is an exception, where it will charge from a lower wattage power supply (like 60W) when in standby or turned off. Often, it is happily charging away, and as soon as you wake it up, it stops taking any power. As soon as I need more, it takes less. And it is definitely not the case that it is draining faster than it is charging. It just stops charging.
Presumably, the justification for all this mess is that it is only supposed to be charged from the barrel plug 180W power supply, but with a weight starting at 1.73 kg, I would rather not lug a 1/2 kg power supply too.
Perhaps in all their efforts to make it slim and lightweight, they wanted to avoid extra power circuitry. After all, in their efforts to slim it down, they also cut an HDMI/DisplayPort, a camera cover - everything in fact except 3 USB C (not all thunderbolt), a USB A and a 3.5mm audio port. Our office meeting rooms are nicely wired with HDMI and USB-C chargers, but people are still forever trying to locate an HDMI adapter, or going back to their desks to get their power supply.
Not exactly the same situation but some older MacBooks had an issue where you had to charge from one side of the laptop and not the other. Technically, the wrong side would charge it just fine but it would also make the computer quickly overheat and throttle until it was unusable, frozen or until it crashed.
Mine work at both but connecting dock to different port re-names every monitor output
Of course there's also the issue of whether your cable is suitable and your charger suitable too.
We appear to have taken a good idea and made it shit very quickly.
A suitable USB cable for all features is ten times the price of a normal cable. That's why many smartphones come with USB-C cables and not actually rated Thunderbolt cables.
If the USB forum enforced their specifications, everyone would be complaining that their cables are now ten times the price, and people would still buy knock-off cables.
Same goes with chargers: I bought a 100W charger that stops delivering 100W after it overheats about half an hour into a session. I could spend twice as much on a charger that sustains the charge, but I probably wouldn't have bought that charger at all for that price.
USB-C would either be branded a bullshit expensive standard (like Apple's Thunderbolt cables are generally regarded) or an incomplete standard that gives manufacturers too much leeway.
I, for one, am quite happy that I can just buy a USB C charger now rather than spend 180 euros on an OEM replacement, even if I ocassionally need to throw a cable into the "garbage that came with an accessoire" bin.
> made it shit very quickly
What? The USB mafia has been at it since usb 1.1 or at best 2.0...
Nothing is stopping you from buying those 100$+ USB4/Thunderbolt5 cables that can do everything all at once.
I mean, it's dumb to charge a phone with it, since you don't need 80Gbps capability, but it'll fit your requirement of not being confusing :P
thinkpad?