Comment by sq_
16 hours ago
I wouldn't be against better labeling, but I've found that I don't have to worry about it too much, day to day.
USB-C has allowed me to grab one decent two-port charging brick, two solid 6ft cables, and charge just about everything I own just by keeping those in my backpack. If I think I'll need to move any data fast, etc., I just throw my one good USB4 cable in my bag, too.
I will admit, though, that I've had some crappy situations at work where it turned out my flaky monitor setup was due to the stupid work-provided docks coming with cables that only supported 10Gbps. Better labeling would've solved those ones.
Hah same exact setup one brick two ports and it charges everything even my laptop! I've been eyeing some of the ones with built in batteries, but I get a lot of mileage of one brick in the bag.
The steam deck forced me to finally pay attention to the usb-c ecosystem and I can only imagine how some non tech people might get with mysteriously bad or slow charging.
I find it crazy that Apple went back to magsafe in the m4 (maybe earlier but that's the machine I have at work). But at least you can still charge over usb-c.
I can't get myself to do the battery-built-in-to-charger thing. I've always treated portable power banks as semi-disposable since they do eventually get worse and fail, and it feels icky to me to tie ~immortal charging gear to something that will die.
I did have the same feeling about flashlights for camping/hiking with lithium batteries, though, until someone walked me through just how much better they are than lugging around AAs.
Charging is the place it matters less.