Hacker News Reader

The rant about "proprietary chargers" for laptops was also untrue, there was uniform 19V brick-type power supply units with uniform 5.5mm barrel connector for at least 15 years.

View on HN

We live in a different world. I'd like to live in yours! Prior to usb c my Hp Dell and Lenovo, all in their enterprise line favouring practicality over fashion and looks, all used wildly different chargers. Even Lenovo alone, in that 15 year span, had round and rectangle tips with 12 and 20v.

That's simply not true. I had three different laptops from 2010 to 2021: an Acer Inspiron (I think that's what it was called), a Dell Latitude, and a Surface Pro 3. All used different chargers. The Surface used Microsoft's proprietary magsafe connector, and the others used different-sized barrel jacks. I currently have a Dell XPS 13 which charges over USB-C.

Oddly, the Acer charger was the same as for an Acer 27" monitor I had, which came in handy once or twice.

Charger for monitor? Curiouser and curiouser.

You could call it a power supply, because the monitor obviously had no battery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com