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Comment by drivebyacct2 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, yes, yes. My friend regularly pulls his Macbook Air off of the coach, table, desk via the L-magsafe.

I've owned two MBPs and a MBA (long stories) in the last two years. T-magsafe -> L-magsafe -> back to the new thin T-magsafe. The T-magsafe annoys me in that it's harder to use in my lap, but it's vastly superior in the reasons I like it: it keeps me from ruining my laptop and/or the female power adapter slot.

I recently acquired a Samsung Series 9 by fortune and am horrified at how the AC bit goes in the side and is already incredibly flimsy. On non-Magsafe laptops, you have the same issue, it's just that instead of disconnecting, it's ruining the internal AC adapter bit. It's annoying as all-get-out when it breaks, especially if it's out of warranty and you don't know how to use a soldering iron.

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The Samsung Series 9 is a good example of bad design not just for the AC port but for many of the ports. We have a couple of the 15" models in the office and the ethernet adapter and mini-hdmi adapter are too big to effectively use at the same time with how close together the ports are. When both are plugged in, the ethernet adapter will typically be at a slight angle and not always completely connected. I realize they are meant for portability and so wi-fi is going to be used most of the time but if you've got big files to transfer it's a huge pain in the ass.

Haha. The left-side USB port and AC power adapter can't even be used at the same time. Pair that with wonky USB3 drivers for the right hand ports and you have a laughable situation.

Don't get me started on touchpad drivers.

I know people have had issues, but mine works perfectly. I own a MBA and I like the Series 9 touchpad better in many aspects. I agree on the ports though, poor design choices.

PC laptop touchpad drivers and hardware are so pathetic, they alone make we want to get Apple laptops. You'd think that at least one of the PC makers would realize this and distinguish themselves by making a quality touchpad and driver. This baffles me. Why some company would make crap and wonder why Apple is beating them.

This is a case where Windows is more of the problem than any individual touchpad manufacturer. If you Hackintosh most reasonably recent laptops, the touchpad acts predictably in OS X. The biggest thing Apple does right in hardware is that they make the touchpad comfortably huge.

That's something that continually surprises me. I've been on the Macs for almost a decade at this point. The touchpad on my 15" 2010 MacBook Pro is quite large and comfortable, it's basically 5" diagonally.

Now my sister's 11" MacBook Air has a much smaller touchpad for obvious reasons. But I see recent 15" or 17" PC laptops with touchpads that are just as small, maybe 3" diagonally. Having the large surface is so nice, I don't think I could go back.

Maybe that's a driver thing too. If large touchpads were always producing false input from being brushed by the palms, using the smaller touchpads may actually be beneficial for users.

That's true. The T shaped connectors detached faster when you tripped. With the L shaped connector, sometimes my laptop will rotate up to 90 degrees before the magsafe detaches.

You didn't by chance acquire this laptop as an intern at a software company did you?

Yes.

I have a first-gen Samsung Series 9, and I've had the internal power socket get ruined by the cable being yanked. After opening it up, and a bit of super glue, it is all good.

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