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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> You realize a barrel jack is just some metal of a certain size right?

The dimensions you use and the voltage you put across it and polarity you use all make the jacks incompatible. You have to use a Dell charger for a Dell laptop.

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The jacks have nothing to do with voltage and polarity is standard. Dell puts extra electronics in that have nothing to do with barrel jacks. You are conflating two things that are orthogonal and could not be more separate, and you were already told this.

I think you're a bit confused about what we're talking about in this thread. It's not specifically about the jack on the end of the charger. The whole chargers aren't standardised. Things which aren't standardised about them include:

- the voltage they apply

- how much power they can deliver

- the dimensions of the barrel connector

- the polarity of the connector

- handshake protocols (DRM)

You can find laptop chargers with any one of hundreds of possible combinations of these. Each one may be individually standardised, but the charger is not. That's what makes them proprietary.

Compare this to manufacturers with some sense, like Apple, that use a standard USB connector for power. That's so much simpler and user-friendly.

All electronics say the voltage and amperage they need, it isn't really that big of a problem, especially on a $200 laptop. It isn't a big deal that a bare bones laptop doesn't negotiate its power over USB-C. Polarity on barrel jacks is pretty standard. You look at the voltage and make sure your ACDC adapter can supply enough amps. In a situation like this you could buy an ACDC adapter off of amazon from dozens of different places.

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