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Comment by akhilcacharya | Hacker News Reader

The non-TB version is nice with a lower power CPU and a higher capacity battery, BUT only has 2 ports instead of 4, which is nothing short of absurd. They really screwed up on this front IMO.

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Hell yeah! I sincerely regard those 2 ports on the cheaper model simply as hardware crippling. Much like AV manufacturers punish you by giving you less audio/hdmi ports if you go for their entry models.

What's the use case for needing 3 USB? Wherever you sit normally (home or work) just get a usb hub/dock and use the single connection to the laptop for keyboard, mouse, charging, and driving a monitor.

When out and about, when do you need 3? Can't ever recall seeing someone at a coffee shop, conference, etc needing 3 USBs.

Sometimes I work at home and hook my laptop up to my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and outlet at the same time. Admittedly I don't do this very often but it's nice to be able to do this as I need to.

I think the idea is you would have a USB-C hub that has all of those ports on it, so you come to your desk to work and plug in a single plug and away you go with charging/monitor/keyboard/mouse/ethernet.

Charge + peripherals makes 2 useless and even makes 4 difficult unless you go with a new TB3 monitor that also provides power.

As I speak I'm using magsafe + thunderbolt2 + HDMI + 2 USB, 1 for peripherals and the other for playing back video.

3 seems like a minimum to me. Power, mouse (yeah, bluetooth, but the only ones I like require a dongle), and phone. My current laptop has two USB ports, and it covers about 99% of my needs, but it's also frequently full.

I don't really mind 2 ports instead of 4, but I wish they put one on each side so I could charge from either side.

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