Tony Finch – blog

One notable feature of the ports on the new MacBook is that the RJ45 Ethernet socket only just fits - it wouldn't if the machine were much thinner. In fact the MacBook Air notoriously doesn't have any wired ethernet connection at all, relying on IEEE 802.11n WiFi for connectivity.

Of course other manufacturers are making expensive thin laptops. The Dell Adamo neatly solves the RJ45 thickness problem by putting the port behind the display hinge, where the machine is as thick as the body plus the display.

The Voodoo Envy's solution is to put the ethernet socket in the power supply, which acts as a WiFi hot spot which the laptop uses for connectivity. This is cute but it means you only get 54Mb/s because the base station doesn't have 802.11n support.

A cheaper and faster alternative would be to pass a gigabit Ethernet connection through from an RJ45 on the power supply to a combined power network port on the laptop. The connector could be much thinner than RJ45 without sacrificing compatibility.

ETA: The other advantage this design would have is that the combined power and ethernet connector can use the magsafe idea, so you don't have the problem of one safe and one unsafe connector when tethered.