[chrisseaton]

> How are barrel connectors "proprietary"?

Are they standardised? Can I use a Dell barrel charger on an HP?

Wikipedia says it's a mess and people aren't following any standards, with the same physical connector having different voltages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Standa....

You need a Dell charger for a Dell laptop. We call this 'proprietary'.

[userbinator]

Can I use a Dell barrel charger on an HP?

You can, if they didn't add any additional DRM on top of it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304194 ) and the polarity is correct (center-positive is most common.)

The voltage is basically irrelevant --- 18-20V is going to be 90% of all laptops, and the other range is 10-12V.

[chrisseaton]

> You can, if they didn't add any additional DRM on top of it ... and the polarity is correct ... [and the voltage is in range]

Right - this is what we mean by proprietary.

[BubRoss]

You realize a barrel jack is just some metal of a certain size right? Calling a barrel jack proprietary because dell added crazy things to their own power supplies is nonsense. Barrel jacks have been around and sold individually in bulk for half a century.

[chrisseaton]

> 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.

[BubRoss]

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.

[chrisseaton]

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.

[serf]

You could add those same DRMs to a USB-C connection and 'manufacturer required' power supply.

Barrel connectors are not proprietary just because someone implemented theirs in some specific way to harm consumers.

In fact USB-C connectors are more likely to implement a DRM, given that the connector comes 'batteries-included' with a data channel that won't need to be re-imagined.

Barrel jacks offer no such boot-straps to would-be DRMers. That isn't to say it's impossible (as HP/Dell/Fujitsu have proven), but a 2 prong barrel jack is going to require a bit more effort.

If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase. Proprietary has specific context to IP/copyright/design.

[chrisseaton]

> If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase.

I'm not - I'm using it to mean non-standard and specific to an individual vendor. I can use my Apple USB-C charger to charge anything accepting USB-C, which is most things these days. I can't use my Dell laptop charger to charge anything except a Dell laptop. That's what I mean by proprietary.

[yellowapple]

> You could add those same DRMs to a USB-C connection and 'manufacturer required' power supply.

And yet I know of exactly zero instances of this happening, probably because it'd be exceptionally silly to do.