Connecting computers in 2021

It's kind of crazy how complicated it is to hook up computers, screens, and other things in 2021.

The story starts with my old work laptop. This was a 2018 MacBook Pro. It had four Thunderbolt 3 ports on it. On the bright side, with all the ports the same, and two on each side, you could plug it in pretty much any way you liked. But most devices I needed to connect to didn't have fancy USB-C connectors on them, and that meant that I needed a dongle. Specifically, I had a dongle that went from USB-C on the laptop to an HDMI port, an ethernet port, and a couple of USB-A connectors. It got the job done, and like I said, the fact that all the ports on the laptop were identical meant that I could put it on either side of the desk, and plug the power and dongle into whichever side suited best.

After working from home for a while I got an external display which had a built-in USB hub. This meant that I could buy the right cables, get rid of the dongle and plug my keyboard and mouse into the monitor. So, the computer now had power going in one side, and out the other side, one USB-C to USB-B connector (running to the monitor's hub), and one USB-C to DisplayPort to provide the video.

The monitor in question is a BenQ whose model number I can't remember — maybe PD2700U or something like that. It's claim to fame is that this USB hub it has can be switched from one computer to another, acting as a kind of integrated KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch. So, I grab a USB-A to USB-B cable, and a DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort video cable, and run them from my Linux box. This means that I can have both the laptop and the Linux box plugged into the monitor at the same time. When I want to switch between them, I hit a button to toggle the video input from Mini DisplayPort (the Linux box) to DisplayPort (the Mac), and another button to flip the upstream connected to the USB hub, thus moving the keyboard/mouse from one machine to another. It's not the slickest, fastest, or smoothest transition, but it is pretty easy and surely beats yanking cables out of sockets and plugging in others.

Later on when I started doing more work on the Linux box via SSH (because it is powerful) from the Mac (because it is comfortable), I added an ethernet cable into the mix, via a small USB-C-to-ethernet dongle. So, I ended up using all four USB-C ports, two on each side, but the overall set-up was pretty tidy.

Anyway, I leave that job and the work laptop goes back to its owners. I decide to get my personal laptop working with the monitor. This one is a mid-2015 MacBook Pro: no USB-C connectors or anything, it has a couple of old-school Thunderbolt ports (same form factor as Mini DisplayPort and can connect to it), a couple of USB-A, an HDMI, and a MagSafe 2 socket for the power. Now, the MagSafe is on one side, the left, which means you don't have the same degree of freedom when it comes to powering it. But I didn't really have much choice about that, so I soldiered on. I had a Thunderbolt-to-ethernet adapter from the old days, so I was able to use that, but it suffered from the same problem as the MagSafe connector: the two Thunderbolt ports are both on the left, which meant that I had to do some cable rerouting to get things where they needed to go. Finally, I bought another USB-A to USB-B cable to plug this thing into the hub on the monitor, and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI so that I could transmit video. Once again, I had a basically dongleless set-up (unless you count the tiny ethernet adapter). All was well in the world, or at least adequate.

The story concludes (for now) with a new work laptop. This one is a 13" model with exactly two USB-C connectors on the left side and nothing else. The horror! In order to plug this thing into the monitor, the monitor's hub, ethernet, and power, I need four ports. But wait, I also need to a YubiKey, so make that five ports. I look on the Apple Store to see what brands have Cupertino's blessing, without really having any intention of buying from there, but at least wanting to find out an endorsement for something that can be expected to work well. I hit Amazon and am dismayed, but not really surprised, to see approximately 692 different models of "dock", "base", "dongle", "hub", and so on, all purporting to do more or less the same thing in an infinitude of different variations. I wade into the swamp that is the review section and come out disappointed. Even the $300 "Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Pro" (the same one from the Apple Store) is drowning in negative feedback, although in this day and age of bots and paid reviews, who knows how much of it is real. After a little bit of "review" reading from what are supposedly tech reporting outlets, some YouTube "review" viewing, I think I'm going to get something like the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock reviewed here.

I hate dongles, but the reason we have such tiny laptops nowadays is that manufacturers like Apple have offloaded a lot of the stuff that used to be inside them into the hands of third-party peripheral makers. The trend probably isn't going to change, so may as well lean into it. The idea of one of these "docks" is that you plug one cable from it into your laptop, and you can charge the laptop from the dock. So, you don't even need to juggle a power brick. The YubiKey can go into the one remaining port, and everything else hangs off the back of the dock. In my case, that will be a USB-C (Thunderbolt) running video to a DisplayPort socket on the monitor, a USB-A cable running up to the hub on the monitor, and the thing even has an ethernet socket on it, so I won't need that dongle any more. Given the cables I have, I could also do Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) to DisplayPort, and USB-C to the hub; it doesn't really matter. This one isn't quite as pricey as the Belkin, but the cheapest I've seen it for is somewhat north of $200. Not really surprising, I guess... as I said above, they've effectively taken a bunch of stuff that used to be inside the computer and externalized it into a separate structure, so you're actually buying a little "chunk of computer" and one that hopefully won't uglify your desk too much. Good thing I have a nice cable raceway screwed behind my desk to hide all this stuff away.

My goal in this post has been to illustrate the rather staggering complexity of getting computers to connect to things. Consider the variety of connections and combinations that we've seen in in this post — just five short years that span three Mac laptop models from mid-2015 to 2020 — and how when you add a monitor, a hub, and another computer into the mix, things get quickly out of hand. As much as I have hated every step of the way, I must begrudgingly admit that Apple probably did the right thing by streamlining the ports on their machines in the name of making things slimmer and simpler. Even MagSafe, which I loved, isn't so great when you only have one of them on one side of your computer. Having everything be Thunderbolt/USB-C makes things massively simpler. The place where I wish Apple hadn't cut corners, though, is in the number of ports: having just two on one side of the machine is simply not enough. A dock ends up being a decent solution (and sure beats having a half-dozen dongles), but is sure would be nice if a pro laptop would come with not just two ports on each side (or worse, on one side only), but three on each side. I can't really conceive of any realistic situation where having six USB-C ports wouldn't be more than enough. Now I just hope that this simple USB-C-only modality sticks around for a while before things start getting complicated, again, because I think I need a break before I get back on the merry-go-round.

Connecting computers: 2025 edition

A couple of updates since I last posted on the subject of getting computers to talk to peripherals and vice versa.

Relationship status: "it's complicated"

I did get that Thunderbolt dock I was talking about. It worked well enough, I suppose. But the number of peripherals increased thanks to the benevolence of my then-employer, which gave me a "home office equipment budget" that I felt compelled to make use of. So, I added an external webcam¹, which connects via USB-A, and a microphone², which also comes in via USB-A.

Plugging these in required me to add a USB switch³ to the line-up, so that I could press a button and have the webcam and microphone switch between laptop and desktop computers. For obvious reasons, I plugged the keyboard into the switch as well, because, why not? And while I have a "Magic Trackpad" that (sometimes⁴) connects to my Mac laptop via Bluetooth, I also have a mouse that I use with the PC. This is a wireless mouse, with the receiver plugged into the keyboard, so its route to the desktop PC looks like this: mouse (with wireless transmitter) → wireless receiver plugged into keyboard → cable from keyboard (micro-USB) to switch (USB-A) → USB-A-to-USB-A cable from switch to PC.

My experience with this switch was undoubtedly better than unplugging and plugging everything each time I wanted to switch, but it definitely suffered from some glitches. I'd say that more than 75% of the time, I had to unplug the camera and/or microphone and plug them back in so that the laptop would recognize them after switching. As I mentioned in one of those footnotes, you can also pipe some power into the switch via the micro-USB port at the back; I don't know whether this helps the switching reliability or not⁵.

It seems most switches are plagued with this kind of issue. I did a search for more expensive, higher quality offerings, but there basically aren't any to be found — all manufacturers are engaged in a race to the bottom, seeing who can build the cheapest shit and ship shovel it out in the greatest possible volumes. To get a more expensive switch, you have to go all the way to a KVM, and those appear to suffer exactly the same kind of problems. Search any product review website, or a forum like L1Techs KVM support, and you'll find that every product has reports of devices failing to be recognized, requiring power-cycling, or disconnecting and reconnecting.

I asked for recommendations at work, and got two Pro-Tips. One was to buy the same UGREEN switch which I have owned for a couple of years, and which I have seen fail to actually switch on countless occasions. The other was to buy two hubs and a separate switch to switch between them (ie. not one switching hub, but three separate devices). That may not be bad advice, and I might try it if I continue to see problems. Another option is to buy the most expensive KM (Keyboard/Mouse) switch — not a KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switch — I can find (this ugly thing, which apparently goes for $250 plus approximately one zillion dollars for import duties, currency conversion to euros, and shipping across the Atlantic).

Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair

The other thing that happened recently is that I noticed both my work and personal laptops failing to charge adequately when plugged into the dock. At first, I noticed this only on the work machine, and blamed corporate spyware for pegging the CPU and draining the battery faster than the dock could charge it. Indeed, using pmset and friends to get power-related info from the machine showed that it was apparently only getting 15W from the dock. For reference, the adapter that comes with my work machine pumps out 96W, apparently, and the one that comes with my personal machine offers a pleasingly triple-digit sustained delivery of 140W.

But when I saw the same draining going on for my personal laptop, and the same 15W charge coming from the dock, I figured the dock was busted, or I had plugged the darn cable into the wrong port:

Sure enough, see those USB-C connectors on the back? They both have little lightning bolts next to them, which I guess signifies Thunderbolt, but also implies power delivery, right? Well, it turns out that the one with the little picture of the computer next to it delivers 85W, but the other one only supplies 15W. Both of them "work", in the sense that you plug your laptop in and it sends video to the display and you can see all the other devices connected, but one of them will have your laptop drinking through a straw, while the other will slake its thirst.

I corrected my mistake, swapping two leads around, and everything is working fine. For another day, I'll consider upgrading to something like the CalDigit TS5 Plus, that supplies 140W on its "host" port, and you can rest assured that if I do, I'll make darn sure to plug the machine into the right socket! The other thing to note is that I've now plugged the switch's extra power line (the micro-USB one) into that leftmost USB-A port on the dock, the one labeled "High-Powered Port". I'm hoping that that means it's getting enough juice to do what it needs to do, most of the time, although the docs say this port is good for "providing up to 1.5A of power", which is a bit shy of the "5V 2A" that the switch manufacturer says it expects (see notes in "Peripherals").

1. I'm linking to the "MK.2" version of the webcam, because they pulled the product page of the previous model, which is the one I actually bought. ↩

2. Here again I'm linking to a different product page. I bought the Blue Yeticaster, if I recall correctly, but Logitech bought Blue a while back and folded everything into their product pages, eliding most obvious mentions of the Blue brand. ↩

3. Here, again, I can't link to the product because it seems the manufacturer doesn't list it any more. For posterity, it was a "UGREEN 4-port USB 3.0 switch" with 4 USB-A input ports, 2 USB-A output ports, a physical button for toggling the inputs from one output to the other, and a micro-USB to (optionally) provide additional power to the switch and the downstream devices. ↩

4. If the Bluetooth Gods will it to be so. ↩

5. I've been using the micro-USB to deliver extra power to the switch pretty much since the day I got it, but I can't remember which port I had it plugged into, historically. (When I moved house, everything got unplugged, then reassembled at the destination, so I don't have any way of finding out whether I had it plugged into the "High-Powered" USB port or not... In any case, keep reading to see why I don't think even the "High-Powered" port delivers enough to fully meet the needs of the switch and its downstream devices.) ↩