Attached to this computer via USB are keyboard and trackball (via KVM), printer, card reader, mobile phone, floppy drive (sometimes), hard drive (well, actually three but only one at a time), joystick, wheel, drawing pad, and a UPS. And then there’s the power cables, the KVM cables, the sound cables, etc. And after that there’s the other computer… The tangle of wires behind the computers is impressively awful.
Oh yes, there’s a memory stick or two around.
My mobile’s already Bluetooth-aware, but I reckon the computer itself, trackball, keyboard, joystick, wheel, UPS, and drawing pad could be added to that list.
Of course, then I’d be moaning about batteries. I can’t win.
My new iMac came with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I’ve got the battery thing licked with NiMh rechargables, but the one thing I had never dreamed would be a problem of going wireless is that, without the wire, if you knock the mouse off the desk, it will indeed travel all the way to the floor. After the third or fourth trip to the floor, the mouse just quit working. Good thing I kept the old USB mouse from my previous Mac.
I’ve been surprised at the lack of technology solutions to the problem of peripheral proliferation. Wireless is ideal, of course, but there are limitations even there. A mega-hub with a dozen or more USB ports might be a solution, except that absolutely no one will support their hardware when it’s on a hub, which indicates a hub compatability problem. On the other hand, do new computers, especially laptops, even need SCSI or LPT ports? The non-USB ports on my laptop take up as much space as five USBs, and I’ve never used them.
I always wondered why PC laptops still used those huge connectors. My first laptop was a MacBook. All its ports are lined up, filling half the left edge of the case: Power, Mini-DVI, RJ-45, FireWire, USB, USB, Headphones, Audio In.
Mac vs. PC arguments aside, I vote we discontinue the following things. Anyone who absolutely needs legacy support for any of these, can buy an adapter of some sorts.
[ul]
[li]Floppy Drives[/li][li]Modems[/li][li]Parallel/Serial/SCSI ports[/li][li]PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse connectors[/li][li]VGA Video connectors[/ul][/li]
Just fill the backs of computers with USB ports, and be done with it. Hell, lets fast-track USB 3.0 and eliminate FireWire while we are at it! Bonus points if they can run displays with USB too.
I still use my LPT port, with my HP Laserjet 4 which I got in 1993. However, I can always get either a USB/LPT cable, or a LPT pci card, were my next computer to not have a port for it.
I remember when ASUS released the first motherboard which lacked PS/2, Serial and LPT ports, but instead had 10 USB ports (at the time, most motherboards had two built in, and sometimes either had a connector for 2 front ports, or came with an expansion slot for 2 more in the back) and everybody’s first response was “who the hell needs 10 USB ports when there isn’t even a place to plug in your keyboard!”
