Laptops
Posted by david | Filed under Computers
I was just looking at my laptop (Dell Latitude D620) and wondered about a few things …
- Why do they bother putting RS-232 ports on laptops anymore? I haven’t seen a device that connects via RS-232 in years. The only devices I can actually think of that used a RS-232 port was an external modem … and most laptops have modems built in (not that they’re used much anyways).
- Ditto with a parallel printer port. Most printers that I’ve seen in the last few years have been connected by USB (’course my laptop doesn’t have a parallel port, but Ginny’s does).
- Why bother with a DB15 video connector? Wouldn’t it be better to just go with DVI? If you need a DB15 video connector, you can use an adapter.
- The hard drive on my laptop uses SATA … I really wish there was an eSATA connector. I tried putting an eSATA card in the PCI slot of the D/DOCK port replicator, but the BIOS wouldn’t recognize it (which is fairly logical, considering there’s no guarantee that the card would be there all the time).
On a somewhat different, although related, topic … I really wish someone would make an inexpensive tablet computer. I have an idea for a nice little appliance application that would be perfectly suited to a tablet computer. All it would need is a 12″ display, 512mb of ram, 4gb to 8gb of flash disk, wifi, and Linux.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:28 am
I still use my RS-232… well actually I don’t, my laptop (Dell Inspiron 9300) doesn’t have one, so I have a USB->RS232 adapter. I use it for our switches, routers, and firewalls.
I agree on the parallel port, it’s a little odd, but I guess until somebody guarantees that there aren’t any more parallel port printers, manufacturers will keep putting them on. USB is just more convenient.
I think I’d be frustrated if they took off the DB15. Both my home, and work monitors still use them, and while I could get a converter, it would be a little disappointing opening a brand new laptop, and finding you cannot use a second screen
What’s your idea? I think I’ve seen slimline tablet screens, no keyboard/etc, just the screen., with all connectors on there I’ll have to see if I can find the site again.