VGA port for laptop? usage?

College Life
1

<p>My Dell XPS 15 lacks a VGA port. For college / universities (I'm going to major in computer sci/engineering), do I need to have to display or present stuff from my laptop? </p>

<p>It does have a minidisplay port which I can purchase a converter to get VGA.. but
do I need VGA port or will I do fine with a HDMI?</p>

<p>(I don't have any typeof visual connection cables stuff.)</p>

2

<p>HDMI is far superior to a VGA port because it also carries audio. And no, they will have an HDMI connection there.</p>

3

<p>Writing software on a 15" laptop is cruel and unusual punishment unless you’re using Linux command line :-). Visual Studio or Eclipse etc work much better on LOTS of LCD real estate…</p>

<p>Most decent monitors of today are the displayport type or have an adapter. You can get a displayport to VGA adaptor but I’d put the $30-40 in a better monitor with displayport…</p>

<p>Some reviews of said monitors: <a href=“Monitors - CNET”>Monitors - CNET;

4

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<p>well, I don’t want to send a lot more. All I want to know is if a VGA port is mostly still commonly used in colleges or is HDMI okay?</p>

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<p>I know HDMI is better but will i survive college presentations and stuff w/o a VGA port? some projectors don’t support HDMI and only vga.</p>

6

<p>The projectors at my college use VGA. Our CS computer labs also have the projectors hooked up to a desktop PC, but most classrooms do not and we need to bring a laptop for presentations. </p>

<p>But that’s the situation at my college, not yours. Have you tried posting in your school-specific forum or on your school’s Facebook group for incoming students?</p>

7

<p>I never had to give a presentation where we didn’t have the option of sticking it on a thumbdrive and doing it off the professor’s computer. Wrecked havoc on embedded videos sometimes, but it was always an option. So even if you end up using a non-HDMI projector you will likely be able to use the professor’s computer.</p>

<p>How hard are the adapters to find? If you can get one at Walmart I’d say don’t buy one till you need it.</p>

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<p>Check your school’s IT department, they’ll usually lend it for free (well at least in my school). The adapter that is.</p>

9

<p>Just get an HDMI to VGA converter.</p>

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<p>Most projectors these days are VGA (sigh) in the corporate world… So for presentations a displayport to VGA would work best. But how often does one get to present off their own laptop especially in freshman/sophomore type classes? In this case, the adaptor would work fine.</p>

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<p>I didn’t even know they still sold graphics cards built with VGA ports.</p>

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<p>lol Are you serious?</p>

<p>VGA always come standard for the most part.</p>

13

<p>

Um, no.</p>

<p>Mini displayport is your best choice. Get a mini displayport to VGA adapter. You could also get a HDMI -> VGA adapter, which might probably be cheaper but hard to find. Then again, to answer your very first question, no. All projectors should already been connected to some stationary desktop nearby. We’ve just been putting our stuff on flash drives and opening presentations on the desktop.
There’s nothing wrong with VGA, except that it’s a little old (by the way, the reason why your laptop doesn’t have VGA is because VGA is being replaced by displayport, which can also carry audio). HDMI is purely for consumer electronics, comes with a royalties, doesn’t do well with daisy-chained displays. Commercial, corporate, industrial are more suited with VGA/DisplayPort. DisplayPort can daisy chain several monitors with one connector, better supports projectors, and a bunch of other fancy stuff HDMI lacks. The two are great alone, but are used for different purposes. VGA and DisplayPort also have locking connectors, which you can guess might be very important for industry.
err, anyways… don’t buy anything. you won’t be hooking up your laptop to a projector.</p>

14

<p>I disagree.</p>

<p>People seem to be forgetting that VGA does not carry audio. You have to use a A/V jack as well with your VGA connector if your presentation has audio. That makes using a VGA port more complicated.</p>

15

<p>Did you even read my post?
VGA is to DisplayPort as S-Video is to HDMI. VGA and S-Video are the older generation of DisplayPort and HDMI, respectively. You can’t compare VGA to HDMI and say HDMI is better because it has audio. You have to compare HDMI to DisplayPort. And both have audio. Also, VGA has something important HDMI does not: locking interconnects. But that doesn’t matter, since they’re like apples and oranges</p>