What will you sacrifice to make way for the new USB? - CNET

But in the bid to simplify our lives with a single input technology, it may end up complicating things with too few connectors -- especially if you're a power user.

Trouble on the port side?

Paring back ports may not seem like a big deal. But it could leave people like me high and dry. Without enough ports, we'll have to buy dongles, hubs and docking stations so we can connect everything we need.

Four ports may seem plenty for most folks. With wireless links like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, we don't need so many cables for keyboards, mice, network cables and printers. But not everyone has upgraded to everything wireless. Even if you have, you might still have exteal drives, thumb drives, DVD drives, camera memory card readers, and the tiny radio controllers for wireless keyboards and mice.

So even a modest number of peripherals can take up a lot of ports. Add to that USB's ability to replace HDMI and DisplayPort video ports, the 3.5mm audio jack, and the power connector, and you could be running into trouble if PC makers get rid of those older standards.

Imagine you're on the road giving a sales pitch. You have a projector plugged into one port, a network cable in another, an exteal drive in the third and a power plug in the fourth. Then a coworker needs you to load up a file from a thumb drive. What are you going to sacrifice?

It's not just me. Transcend, a Taiwanese maker of storage products like flash memory cards, card readers and exteal drives, told me it's considering selling a hub "to avoid the limited amount of ports available" on PCs equipped with USB-C ports.