Avoiding turning your Notebook into a brick

I have recently released a detailed buying guide for specifying 11th Generation EVO Certified notebooks. You can read the guide here.

The actual RFQ template referred to in the guide will be available from your First Tech account manager in November.

What I did not address in the guide was a very important bit of user education about these new notebooks – the TB4 connector!

There can be only one!

All legacy standards roll up into the Thunderbolt 4 port INCLUDING the ability to charge your notebook and to charge other devices in turn.

Thunderbolt collects ALL your connection history into one, tiny connector.

And that is the problem, it is one tiny connector!

11th Generation notebooks can support up to 4 TB4 connectors, but you only need one.

Even if you have two connectors, damaging one can be a problem, because if you lose the second one you may not be able to charge your notebook. Some notebooks may only have one connector that supports Power Delivery (if PD is not supported then in terms of the specification, it cannot be called a Thunderbolt).

THE SIZE OF THE CONNECTOR!

Users need to be educated about the fact that the TB4 port on their notebook is physically TINY compared with the USB Type-A ports that have been around for years. The old Type-A ports can take a lot of physical punishment, and even if you lost the use of one port you had a few others to fall back on.

Now the new TB4 ports connect EVERYTHING to your notebook – lose the port and your notebook is effectively, and expensively dead!

Treat the TB4 port with the same care as you treat the USB-C or lightning port on your mobile phone.

The pictures give you an idea of how much smaller the TB4 connector is. Compare the Type-A connector on left with the TB4 connector on the far right.

USB-C and TB4 connectors are interchangeable, but USB-C does not carry the functionality that TB4 does.