TRRS or Not?When I picked up my laptop I knew it being a budget device that it might lack certain features. Though the hard drive is a solid state is much slower than most. The quad core Celeron processor is much more under powered than most Ultrabooks and I believe my TRRS jack is only a TRS jack.

Say it ain’t so!

I attempted to make a video call in a noisy location. Pulled out my trusty headphones and plugged them in. Checking the audio settings and found that the terrible microphone connected to the webcam was the only input source.

This might be a Linux driver thing. I completely wiped this machine of Windows when I first got it. I’ve searched the web and regardless of OS some of these cheaper machines skip on the TRRS plug. We even have the TRRS logo next to the port. I may never know, but I do know I need a solution.

A quick search lead me to this Frankenstein dongle.

It's alive!

The USB sound card ($6 at the TRW Swap meet) and attached TRRS to TRS adapters seem to work flawlessly. I’ve tested it with sound recording and video chat. I like this because it can work on any device including a raspberry pi computer.

So this is my first leap into dongle life and it’s not as horrible as I heard. I really love my little workhorse laptop and as software gets more and more optimized the very limiting speeds seem to matter less. Though I think my next laptop purchase will probably be a older Thinkpad I’ve decided to keep this thing around for the time being.