Nice little lap and docking station at office

[forreachingme]

Plan to buy some new hardware, the last HP Pavilion with nice huge high quality screen is over 8 kg in the bag with the huge transformer, way to much and outdated !

Looking to buy a small one to go with me home in the evening and on travel, and add a docking station or two office and home...

Now, what is a docking station ? only a screen and a keyboard / mouse or it should be another PC as well ?

I plan to have a backup drive or 2 preferably at office, changed each few year before they crash, as well advised on another thread...

I do not see the importance of the docking station being another PC as well, some datas might not be exchanged and it would only help me have more datas spread on more partitions...

The docking station for me should just be using the same PC, with a good screen / keyboard...

Any suggestion from experience ?

[mrsquirrel]

Depends what you want.

HP actually have a very nice media dock that fits most of their notebooks. It's quite fancy. comes with wireless keyboard and mouse.

Thinkpad do nice docking stations as well for their notebooks, but they are hugely expensive unless you grab one off ebay.

The Thinkpad ones do however have the nifty feature of a separate hard disk if you want and a separate graphics card.

They do cheaper docks, but the advanced dock is pretty good.

[forreachingme]

Mostly working on excell for quotes and price lists... Word for a fax...internet browsing..

have to collect and show off pictures as well, normal office work, no programming or such...

[mrsquirrel]

They are the only two I know off the top of my head that have docks. I presume the others do.

[forreachingme]

The small Sony VAIO looks good, bit expensive, and no idea yet about a docking station for this, will check...

Just looked at HP, plenty of cable connections, but as the docking remains on the same desk it might not be a problem...
On the other hand if this is all wireless, you can roam in the office with the little thingy and print or show a Power Point on the screen without cable hassle,

[mrsquirrel]

I'm quite confused as to what you actually want now.

[forreachingme]

Need to expand your computer USB, Parallel, or Serial ports on your laptops or PC? The Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Docking Station can do exactly that! Enjoy this portable USB 2.0 docking station to increase port dependant peripherals such as printers, PDA's, modems, digital cameras, and much more!



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The USB 2.0 Docking Station is a unique expansion unit specially designed to accompany notebook or desktop computers which have extra connectivity demands. With only one USB port required from a notebook or PC computer such devices as PIO, SIO, LAN, and PS/2 peripheral devices can be accessed and operated freely from the docking station.

The USB 2.0 Docking Station allows you to add multiple high performance USB 2.0 peripheral devices to you PC or notebook computer and is fully backwards compatible with USB rev. 1.1 products, this means any previous USB 1.1 devices will continue to operate and function properly through the USB 2.0 Docking Station. With no additional hardware setup the USB 2.0 Docking Station has many features as listed below.



There are two modes of powering the USB peripherals, self power and bus power modes. Features

• Compliant with Universal Serial Bus Specifications Rev 2.0 (Data Rate 1.5/12/480 Mbps
• Two USB 2.0 downstream facing ports (type A receptacle)
• One PS/2 keyboard port
• One PS/2 mouse port
• One USB file transfer data link port for USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Docking Station Switch LAN only (type B receptacle)
• One serial port (DB-9-pin male)
• One printer port (DB 25-pin female)
• One 10/100Base Ethernet LAN port (RJ-45, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Docking Station Switch LAN only)

What i want is a small PC easy and ligth to go on the road ...

But in the office i'd like to work on a bigger screen and normal keyboard,

This USB docking station might do the trick with any small PC

[mrsquirrel]

^ Probably not.

If that is the case go for the HP setup. It was only about $80 for the dock on it's own and is normally sold as a package.

A niice 24in HP LCD for your main monitor.

[forreachingme]

Seems that those little machines are not yet up to replace a good proper laptop.

So i'll go for a laptop, the weigth of this ACER is only 2.5 kg, a real improvement compared to my 8 Kg HP machine...

[mrsquirrel]

^ You have possibly confused me more in this thread than you have ever done in all your other threads put together

[forreachingme]

^eeee, sorry.. was just looking to get some very small to go on the road but powerfull laptop...

That thing should have a docking on my desk at office and then enable all necessary common features such as bigger screen, CD - DVD read write, mouse and proper size keyboard...

Just found out that those very small laptop actually do not yet replace a normal laptop...

Next micro laptop generation will possibly be up to the job...A year or 2 to go...

Sony VAIO has one that is quite small and good performances, has a very funny soft screen, you can bend it, problem is the price you cannot bend...