Barbara Krasnoff is officially the reviews editor for The Verge, but although she has done a great deal of reviewing in her time, she doesn\u2019t tend to do a lot of it in her current position. \u201cI was originally hired here to write and edit to-do articles,\u201d she explains. \u201cNow, I spend most of my time editing, overseeing various projects, and coaxing staffers to write about their favorite stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where did you first hear about the Dell mobile adapter?<\/strong><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t actually hear about it \u2014 I saw it at a trade event here in New York City a few years ago. Dell was showing off some of its new products, and one of the accessories was this little puck-looking item with several ports around its periphery. But the neatest thing was that it had its own USB-C connector on a short cable that revealed itself when you spun the base in a clockwise direction. Then, when you spun it counterclockwise, the cable pulled neatly back into the base. It looked both ingenious and useful, and as soon as it was available, I bought one for myself.<\/p>\n My first laptops had lots of ports, but as the computers got thinner, the ports began to disappear. Eventually, most of the laptops I used only had one or two USB-C ports for anything I wanted to physically connect to my device. This little adapter lets me use a variety of different connectors, including some that belong to my older devices.<\/p>\n What do you like about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n As I mentioned before, it includes a number of different ports, some of which are no longer in use but I prefer to have on hand. The model I have, the DA300, comes with an ethernet port, a USB-C and USB-A port, an HDMI port, a VGA port, and a DisplayPort. There are other, newer models with a different selection of ports.<\/p>\n I also think the whole spin-the-disk-and-the-cable-disappears thing is a lot of fun.<\/p>\n