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Comment by glpgeFwac | Hacker News Reader

> Can't use 3 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock

Or you could buy a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max and plug in four monitors without displaylink.

Something that most sub 1000€ laptops could do over a decade ago, requires a macbook costing well above 2000€ in 2025.

I'm running multiple types of machines in my home for work and personal use but macs have been by far the worst offender for multiscreen support for a long time.

Most $1000 laptops supported three monitors a decade ago?

Vintage 2015? Yes. Any Dell Latitude (mid tier business line) would have supported 3 monitors and would have been in the ~$1000 range, especially picked up off of Dell Outlet. I have Dell Latitude Windows machines from 2011 that supported 3 monitors.

Using what ports? I had Dells back then and at most they had one VGA or HDMI port.

If you’re referring to using a dongle with its own GPU like some of the modern Displaylink adapters, any Mac can do that.

Not dongle; docking station (old school ones with port on the bottom).

That wasn’t a capability of the laptop. The docking station had its own dedicated graphics hardware that drove the extra monitors. Of course the lowest end Macs can do that. When we talk about how many monitors a certain laptop can drive, we mean plugging them in directly to the laptop in some combination of HDMI ports and USB C/Thunderbolt ports.

This is embarrassing, just stop. You can go look up the specs of any chip and how many discrete displays the iGPU supported instead of bickering about what is or isn't a laptop feature. Citing sources isn't illegal or passe.

Here is the chip in my dogshit 2015 Ultrabook I still lug around, it very clearly states that the chip supports 3 displays regardless of how IO bandwidth is distributed on the mobo: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/88192/i...

Exactly how did you attached three monitors to your laptop without a docking station? I bet you the docking station had displaylink based hardware/software like most of the Dell docking stations had

You didn’t give any citations on your specific model of laptop or docking station. You just admitted that you used an old school docking station - those came with GPUs.

And your citation said it wasn’t available in all configurations.

It wasn't DisplayLink. Docking station only added ports.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/274734034597?itmmeta=01KAWK2DRBFS5H...

The docking station didn't have GPUs; they only had the extra ports.

I haven't kept up, but do they support display port daisy chaining and multi display docks now?

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