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Comment by don-code | Hacker News Reader

I feel like manufacturers still haven't cracked the 3+ monitor code.

My ThinkPad T500 could output to three monitors, way back in 2009 - but you needed to disable Windows' driver signing, and run a custom, patched video driver. Linux on the other hand supported it natively, but you lost the ability to switch between the Intel and AMD graphics cards - it did this by running one display off the Intel card.

Luckily, my daily driver (ThinkPad T460p) outputs to three monitors just fine.

At work, I've specifically requested that I keep my circa-2019 Intel MBP, because it can support three monitors, but at least one of them must be DisplayPort. They're now giving out MBPs with the M2 Pro, but these only support two external monitors at all, and that's a dealbreaker for me.

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My current and last laptop was a Thinkpad T15G gen2 (circa 2021), and even with their triple display dock it could never do triple 4k/60 out of it using linux in any stable fashion, so I really don't know how StarTech is accomplishing this. There's simply not enough bandwidth for 3x displays at 4k/60 let alone 4x, not to mention all the other usb things attaching to the dock. Others do it using the horrible DisplayLink conversion chips that have only ever provided wonky drivers for any platform, worst off of all Linux, where I won't even consider these as a Linux user, but even Windows/Mac tend to be trash.

I don't see DisplayLink listed in their chips on this dock, but I have to wonder if they're using some other chip now, hoping for less suck than for DisplayLink, but would likely require drivers, and thus DOA for Linux (and thus not mentioned in OS support).

The biggest problem with this or most any dock is they can't support DP passive adapters (stated in StarTech docs), which kills most use-cases for using larger format displays as I do (3x 50" curved LCD's). They only have HDMI input, and end up having to use 3x powered adapters that were another ~$100 each, individual power bricks, extra cables, extra mess.

All these docks end up impractical for real world usage sadly. I wish someone might one day consider the possible use cases vs. creating some random crap-gadget that really doesn't work for anyone but the most rare and optimal use cases.

Why this type of Active DP > HDMI adapter without external power for 15€ does not suffice?

https://de.assmann.shop/en/Cables-and-Adapters/Video-Cables-...

Depending on your tolerance for bodges, if you get a dock which supports DisplayLink technology (The Dell D6000s does for example), and then install the DisplayLink manager, you can drive 3 external monitors from your Apple M-series laptop.

It's a bodge though, because it creates the extra monitors as 'virtual' monitors, screen records them, and sends the data to the dock. It doesn't play back DRM-protected video for instance. But if you don't need that, it works very well indeed!

Ya, they've changed around the monitor support for the M series chips a bit, but at least the M3 Max still supports up to 4 external monitors.

I would buy an extra mac if they made the 15" Macbook Air do 2 external displays + the built in display but I doubt they'll ever put enough display controllers in that chip, or put a Pro chip in the Macbook Air.

eGPU? Why cart around the chips when you aren’t using them?

I wonder if it would make sense for general-use-class GPU to be bundled into displays so the t-bolt cable is just handling driver API instead of video stream.

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