During JSDay.it people had a lot of time even connecting to the WiFi while I was running at 80 mbps.
Why? How in the world is a standard laptop with an ethernet too "thick" for you? Do you routinely try to slide your laptops under doors or through mail slots? Making laptops ridiculously thin doesn't solve anything except making them look thinner.
Sure, but it's replaceable for the cheap cost of ~$10 - 20.
> There's no VGA port either which is a necessity for me.
2007 called, they want their already-deprecated video standards back.
> No CD drive either.
2000 called, they want their already-deprecated media storage standards back.
>Is this thing a laptop or a big smartphone with no touch screen?
Clearly a laptop.
>No numpad either, wow.
Now I'm convinced you're trolling.
Still inconvenient at least. USB Ethernet dongles also have the possibility of not being able to be used for network booting.
>2007 called, they want their already-deprecated video standards back.
Make it DVI or whatever you want then. I still need a video output for another monitor.
>2000 called, they want their already-deprecated media storage standards back.
I use the CD drive for things like DVDs or old PC games. Bluray disks are used now as well. Disks are not dead.
>Now I'm convinced you're trolling.
I like using the numpad so I must be a troll.
There is thunderbolt, DisplayPort, mini HDMI, and micro HDMI. Any small form factor laptop has at least one of these. DisplayPort, mini HDMI, and micro HDMI are all standard connectors. Mini HDMI and micro HDMI can be converted to DVI with connectors only and no additional active electronics.
> Still inconvenient at least. USB Ethernet dongles also have the possibility of not being able to be used for network booting.
If you're already carrying around an ethernet cable, just leave the NIC attached to the ethernet cable. You said it yourself that you have no issue carrying around 10 pounds worth of electronics, an ethernet dongle only weighs a few grams.
Note that many laptops simply do not support network booting, however these newer laptops (especially the macs) have proper networking built into the EFI firmware. Additionally, note that USB 3 and thunderbolt have pushed the bar for what you can do with external peripherals. If your only option for wired networking was a USB 2.0 networking adapter, then yes, I agree, that would be a joke. The USB 3 and thunderbolt NICs are actually quite good though. The USB 3 NIC that is sold by Apple supports every networking standard you would expect a built-in NIC to support and can achieve gigabit speeds without issue. It is additionally supported by the linux kernel out of the box. I actually find these NICs to be quite valuable when working in data centers as I can connect my laptop to multiple networks which have an air gap between each other by using multiple USB 3.0 NICs.
Samsung Series 9 ultrabooks don't actually use USB or Thunderbolt for the external NIC, instead they just use a connector that is thinner and provide an adapter to attach a normal ethernet cable to it. This allows them to have a normal onboard NIC and still maintain the thin form factor.
The thing that has reignited support for external peripherals is really USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt since they provide enough performance to support high bandwidth external devices.
Note that I'm not an Apple "fanboy" by any means, I use a work-issued Macbook Pro because it is relatively compact and sports a 500gb SSD, an 8-thread I7, 16GB of RAM, and exceptional battery life. I run linux on it and booted OS X fewer than 5 times so I don't actually benefit from Thunderbolt and as a linux guy I don't advocate proprietary connectors. It's really hard for me to say that Thunderbolt is inconvenient though when I see colleagues plug a single Thunderbolt cable into their laptop which is daisy chained to multiple 32-inch displays, gigabit ethernet, external hard drives, and multiple USB peripherals without any performance issues. As the industry continues to push the bar for high speed external buses, we'll continue to see the practicality of external peripherals increase.
Different form factors suit different purposes and different people. I own multiple laptops because of this, but I actually far prefer high performance desktops over laptops as I work on enterprise virtualization software and frequently need multiple hardware-accelerated NICs, a physical raid controller, 32-64GB of RAM, etc. No laptop meets these requirements so I go with the most portable form factor possible instead of using something in the middle which I find to be a mediocre compromise between portability and performance (adds more size and weight, but doesn't actually help me get more done). Most people have far lower requirements though and a macbook air will work just fine.
The important thing to remember is that no one is taking away the other options and all parts of the industry benefit directly or indirectly from the advancement of technologies which allow laptops to be made thinner, lighter, and less power hungry. Buy whatever suits your taste, it's great that we have options.
It costs £25 (US$42, so this isn't some cheap junk), and of the twelve reviews, six give it one star and two give it two stars.
The point of using ethernet in preference to wifi is to get the dependability of battle-tested 30 year old technology; and using an ethernet dongle deprives you of that.
[1] http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC704ZM/A/apple-usb-ethern...
Apple will charge something absurd for their adapter.
A Marriot in Seattle gave me link but no address. I followed the ethernet cable behind the desk to a DSL style modem that connected to the hotel's phone system. I checked it out and essentially, instead of running Cat5 wire, they re-used the phone lines and were basically doing in-house DSL to each room. I called the front desk and was told that they had discontinued their wired internet.
Other Marriots and Hiltons I've tried since didn't even have the little device there, just a sad ethernet cable hanging down from the desk.
Thankfully, my current job provides a hotspot, so most of the time I just use that. The cost of the room and wifi don't bother, it's the fact that the speeds are horrible during non-peak times and non-existant during peak times.