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Comment by getcrunk | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people use their laptop as a desktop replacement and kinda leave it in one spot or only move it between two spots (home desk/office desk) rather than as an actually portable take anywhere use anywhere situation

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In that case I'd rather just have one of those big usb hubs that has every port on it. Rather than an adapter designed that it only works on one laptop. Sure in theory you could plug them in to any but the design of it is such that you'd snap the connector if you plugged it in to a normal port.

While a regular usb-c ethernet adapter has a flexible cable between the laptop and the bulky rigid part.

Thunderbolt hubs are rather amazing now; in the past they'd either get super hot and have reliability issues, or had severe bandwidth limitations (especially if using larger displays).

The current crop has been great for my needs — a couple models have 10G Ethernet built in (CalDigit is the one I'm using now), and most now have more than one Thunderbolt port that allows a high speed storage device to be used as well (in addition to a 5K or 4K display or two!).

My TB5 dock from OWC on a M4 Pro MacBook can run dual 4k 240hz displays, 2.5gb ethernet, and several peripherals no problem. It also provides 100W of power. All over a single cable. So good these days

I may have the same one and I love it so much. Plug one USB C-looking cable into my laptop, and two 32” monitors and a host of accessories light up as it starts charging. It’s the greatest docking station ever.

In that case why wouldn't you use a hub/docking station type thing? And again, that configuration still lends itself just fine to a dongle.

Then dock it - these things have USB4 / TB, may as well get a TS5 and cover all your bases in one wire.

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