On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 12:43:42PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Current laptops rarely have Ethernet ports. Wireless is good enough for most purposes and ethernet sockets add thickness. You can always add a dongle (USB 3.x and Thunderbolt are plenty fast enough).
I have a USB gigabit adapter for my work laptop. Haven't used it once yet in 3 years.
Perhaps "workstation" (eg. ThinkPad P series) and "gaming" notebooks have them. Those are not optimizing for minimum weight and minimum size.
The 3rd gen P series dropped it. They do have 40Gbps USB4/thunderbolt ports though.
I think that's dead except on systems that require more than 100w. Not sure.
Certainly the Thinkpad P16 uses a rectangular 230W power connector. Looks the same as the previous P series as far sa I can tell.
I like the ThinkCentre M75q tiny at the moment. Not perfect by any means. I just bought one and will try to use it to replace my almost 10 year old conventional desktop.
It all depends on what you value.
I always think I want upgradability. So lets look at what I did upgrade in almost 10 years of my disktop.
- more RAM (4 sockets!). M75q has 2 sockets (I've maxed it)
- video card (PCIe sockets). M75q cannot be upgraded.
- faster ethernet card (PCIe sockets): I never needed it. M75q cannot. But now I have a mild need: we got Bell FTTH with 1.5g down. I expect it doesn't matter.
What do you imagine that you might expand?
Well you don't have to have more than 1Gbit on a single machine just because you have 1.5Gbit to the house. Although I guess if you don't share with anyone, you want to use it all yourself. I am currently pondering whether 10Gbit switches are easy to find to wire up my new house when I move this fall. Well if I wanted to spend $10000 they are easy to find, but that seems a tad unreasonable to me. Now if I could buy one at cost from work... maybe I should ask. -- Len Sorensen