USB Port Blues

As a regular user of a computer notebook, I've noticed many deficiencies with the design of more notebooks. One of the areas that of the late I've been rather picky on is the placement of the USB ports. My first notebook was an IBM X21 notebook which is considered as one of the best notebooks on the market with its noticable titanum case. For additional note, this notebook series have received several awards in reputable trade and consumer magazines making it one of the best of the smaller and more portable 12" notebooks. Contrary to what many people feel about small notebooks, I had first hand experience in carelessness in which I accidentally dropped my notebook over the desk a couple of times - in which to my surprise and delight, it was working!





After a couple of years using the notebook, after my warrantee was expired, I decided to try a few tricks I usually like to do - and one of them involves the upgrading of the bios. Flashing the bios has not been recommended by experts due to its dangerous consequences in which many computer manufactors will void the warrantee if they found that the user has done that process. However as I was rather proficient in flashing bios on various desktops mainboards, I thought that upgrading the notebook mainboard bios could squeeze some additional power on what is an increasing aged notebook. After a brief few minutes of the bios update, I found out that my notebook just simply "ceased to exist" and it was dead - which was ironic that it survived a number of drop-tests and rough handling by the owner. Its a first hand experience on knowing that flashing the bios is considered to be one of the most dangerous aspect in the computer - what that can't kill a computer from the outside, and be killed in the inside :-/

So after that day, I had to shop for a new notebook. As being a rather technological saavy person, I wanted to find a notebook that fits my image. Though I don't really care much about fashion, I do feel as a technological expert, its certainly worth to pay extra to find a right notebook for myself. After a huge decision making process, I ended up buying a Fujitsu S6120 series notebook after figuring that I best buy one of the better and more established brands in the market. My cause was helped when I found a person who was willing to off-load a brand new notebook a huge fee lower than the official selling price in the local market.





On the initial usage of the S6120, I found that the notebook was adequate, though at a 13" configuration it was a little larger and heavier than my original X-series notebook. After usage for a while, I start to find more and more reasons why the IBM notebooks were considered to be better than Fujitsu if on the same price scale. A very good example would be the placement of USB ports. On the X-Series, the notebook had 2 USB ports. One of them was in the back, the other in the side. The side configuration was used for an external mouse, whereas the back were used for other devices. On the Fujitsu S-series notebook, there are also 2 USB ports and they are located on top of each other on the back of the machine. Though I didn't really thought much about that, after a few weeks of usage I found that the USB configuration of the machine was inadequate. A very good example would be from the fact that I always use an external mouse if possible. Once an external mouse has been fit in one of the USB port, it was hard to place the second device in the port above. Some devices such as thumbdrives are huge, and it requires a lot of vertical space forcing me to take out all USB devices if I wanted to connect that.

As I wanted to point out here, the number of USB ports in the notebook is certainly not a good indicator of how good the notebook is. Sometimes placement and smaller details do make a huge difference - in which I appreciated the IBM X-Series notebook alot of its placement whereas I had a more critical time with the Fujitsu S-Series notebook.

Though I had a huge USB Port Blues with my notebook, I easily solved the problem by having an additional device I bought for my notebook which was a USB hub. My acquisition many months ago was a Targus USB 1.0 Hub. If you wondered why I didn't buy the USB 2.0 Hub, I wanted to point out that the price difference ($10 for a USB 1.0 vs $30 for a USB 2.0) I felt that the extra speed is hardly required for the Hub. Most of the devices I connect to the Hub were mouse/keyboard/joypads. These input devices can serve me well when I only had the 9.6 kbps serial port and certainly that is little reason to upgrade. Anyway, this whole rambling blog is nothing more than a quick reminder to ask ourselves whether we really need the fastest and best accessories. Its easily noted that at times, its more important to figure what you really need and the rest would easily be solved, and that is the lesson I leave here :)