Laptop makers have no brains

Once upon a time each phone brand had its own charger type. But common sense prevailed, hastened by the European Union, and everyone agreed on USB starting first with mini then micro connector. For more on this story you can read here, here and here.
Apple has been a notable exception but it has gazillion phones out there using only one type of connector.
But it seems the day the rain of common sense fell the laptop manufacturers had umbrellas. Different charger types even along same product brand. It’s hell. It doesn’t make sense. It is stupid.
There is nothing technical about this after all almost all laptops in the world are made by just 5 companies – Quanta, CompalWistron, Inventec and Asus.  The last has since established its own brand. I use its excellent Asus RTN66R VPN Router in my lair.
There has been numerous talks and proposals to have all laptops share a common charger. A standard has been pushed aggressively by IEC but still a pipe dream. Wake me up when it happens.
Good night fellas.

Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adédèjì is the founder of Lendsqr, the loan infrastructure fintech powering lenders at scale. Before this, he led Trium Limited, the corporate VC of the Coronation Group, which invested in Woven Finance, Sparkle Bank, Clane, and L1ght, amongst others. He has almost two decades of banking experience, including stints as the Divisional Head of Electronic Banking at Fidelity Bank Plc. He drove the turnaround of the bank’s digital business. He was previously responsible for United Bank for Africa Group’s payment card business across 19 countries. Alongside other industry veterans, he founded Open Banking Nigeria, the nonprofit driving the development and adoption of a common API standard for the Nigerian financial industry. Beyond open APIs, Adédèjì works deeply within the fintech ecosystem; he’s the board chairman at Paystack. Adédèjì is a renowned fintech pundit and has been blogging on technology and payments at dejiolowe.com since 2001.