Closest Windows competitor to the MacBook Air 13: Lenovo ThinkPad X9-14 laptop review

[AnActualClown]

How about a DVD drive and an Ethernet port?

DVD drive is not good because it's a reliability risk having something spinning at high speed and you drop your laptop. Not to mention disc drive tend to go bad after time and start scratching the actual discs themselves until they become unusable. And that's before going into the significant additional power they take which kills battery efficiency. So I don't mind losing this.

Ethernet is crucial imo. Having high speed with consistent low latency internet connection is paramount. The fact that most gaming laptops don't have this despite being marketed for gaming is a joke. The ethernet ports isn't even that huge.

I'd like to add having VGA port to is a must (for projectors, etc) although I'm probably gonna get crucified for it.

Everything else I don't really care for. Go ahead with dongle life. Remove them all. Barely use usb. What am I gonna use usb for? I can transfer photos wirelessly at Gigabit speeds. Usb mouse? I'm fine with wireless. External storage? Meh don't need it and the people that do are literally docked all day anyway.

[Ednumero]

On a different dongle note, HDMI is long overdue for retirement. The port takes up valuable space that could instead be used to offer an additional more capable USB-C with DisplayPort support, and display adapters don't carry the same portability concerns as those needed to connect mice and thumb drives. It's time for HDMI to join the league of relics including VGA, DVI, composite, component, and S-Video before it.

[Benjamin Herzig]

Strongly disagree. There are zero signs of HDMI going away. As long as projectors and TVs with HDMI continue to be the standard, calling for it to be removed from laptops is highly premature.

[Ednumero]

I agree there are no signs of it going away. But speaking on the merits, it would be better to have one standard, and DisplayPort has so far taken the edge on capability and interoperability. HDMI is a redundant player kept in place moreso by convention than practicality.

In addition to leading the charge on bandwidth, DisplayPort has historically supported passive HDMI conversion (DP++) as an extension of the standard, while the same has not generally been the case for HDMI to DP. This situation has evolved somewhat over time, but not to the extent that we need to continue developing two parallel standards.

I am calling for an industry-wide shift to DisplayPort, with passthrough HDMI support for as long as we need, not just the port's removal from laptops specifically.