Industry Expert Blogs

Not Enough USB Ports

The most common complaint I hear now is that PC’s don’t offer enough USB 3.0 ports.

In the most recent blog from Jeff Cable, he talks about how he bought a MacPro that has only 4 USB 3.0 ports.

Jeff Cable says:

“The only bad thing is that the new Mac Pro only has 4 USB ports, which are all filled now. I have so many devices (Wacom Cintiq, Epson R2000 printer, video adaptor, Dymo Labelwriter 450 printer, keyboard, Intuos tablet, card reader) that I am short one port. I have ordered a 7 port USB 3.0 hub, but I can’t understand why Apple would put only 4 USB ports when they have 6 Thunderbolt ports. The Thunderbolt ports can daisy chain up to 30 devices, but the USB ports can’t. A small oversight in my opinion.” Jeff Cable http://jeffcable.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-new-mac-pro-fro-apple-converting.html

The good thing is he could actually buy a DisplayLink USB Docking station that would help out with all of this, or a USB 3.0 Hub which solves all his problems.

I have the same complaint about my laptop, except that I have a docking station which takes care of this 90% of the time.

For my Parents and my wife I simply purchased cheap USB 2.0, and now USB 3.0 Hubs as cheap docking stations. I’m getting the DisplayLink based Docking station this year because the Ultrabooks they’ve purchased don’t have a VGA output, so USB 3.0 is the way to go.

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