It’s been more of a pain in the arse than initially expected.
Most motherboards (for example) only have 2-4 USB-C ports, meaning that I still need to employ A-C and C-C cables for peripherals etc.
My main gripe is that the standard just tries to do too many things without clear delineation/markings:
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Is it a USB 2.0 (480Mbit), 5Gbit, 10Gbit or 20Gbit cable? Can’t really tell from the plug alone.
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More importantly, for charging devices: How the heck do I determine maximum wattage I can run?
For all its faults, at least the blue colour of a USB-3.0 plug (or additional connectors for B/Micro) made it easy to differentiate !
Now I’m eyeing up a USB Cable tester just to validate and catalogue my growing collection! 🤦🏻♂️
Just recently I had a tech store guy gently but repeatedly insist to me that a certain USB cable was a USB 3 cable because it was type C on both ends. I didn’t wanna argue with him, but the box clearly said “480 Mbit”, so it was just a type C charging cable.
Of course the box designers were hoping you’d make that mistake so they didn’t write USB 2 on there, just the speed. And most boxes won’t even have that, you’ll just have to buy it and see.
But I mean if someone who spent their whole life fixing computers can get something that basic wrong, then it’s really a hopeless situation for anyone who isn’t techy.
And of course once it’s out of the box it’s anyone’s guess what it is. It’s a real mess for sure.
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