Friday, March 13, 2015

The Hub Situation

When I sit down at my desk with my computer I plug in a lot of things. I really plug in. I plug in power. I plug in a USB keyboard (which has a USB mouse and USB scanner attached). I plug in a Thunderbolt display. I plug in a Thunderbolt ethernet adapter. I plug external speakers into the headphone jack. I plug a second display into HDMI. I plug a dongle for wireless headphones into the other USB port. The only port I’m not using is the SD Card slot.

I have been having been looking hard at the Thunderbolt hubs out there because I could replace ALL of those connections with a single Thunderbolt connector—pretty darn slick.  Sitting down at my desk and walking away from desk would mean that I only needed to plug in two cables (power & thunderbolt hub). The problem is that the hubs are very expensive (think $250 - $300). It’s a lot to pay for convenience, but it was probably going to be my next buy (as soon as I have enough mullah after buying the  Watch).

Then Apple came out and released a new computer that only has the USB Type-C connector on it and I became paralyzed with fear. Am I about to plop down a bunch of money when the Thunderbolt port is on its way out from the tier of laptops that I use? That is a lot of money if it’s only going to be a around for a year or two.