If you’ve never used a laptop docking station before, you should first ask yourself if you actually need one. A docking station allows you to work at your desk with a laptop, treating it more like a regular desktop. This can be incredibly helpful if you use your laptop at home and at the office. Along with port replicators, you can also get a lot of additional functionality. Laptops usually sacrifice functionality in favour of portability, so these can both come in real handy if you need a little more out of your laptop. For example, most laptops don’t include things like FireWire ports or top-speed USB ports. Using the right adapters for a docking station, you can plug your laptop into just about anything.
Of course, for this added functionality, you do sacrifice portability, so don’t expect to plug your laptop into a docking station and take it on down to your favourite coffee shop or the library to get some work done, unless they have an area where you can sit and plug it into the wall, and you don’t mind hauling your accessories and peripherals all over town with you. Really, a docking “station” is, by definition, stationary, after all.
Docking stations, or “expansion bases” can cost anywhere from one to three hundred new, but many will go for a fraction of their original price used, or on auction sites.
Below, we’ll list a few of the stations on the market, the following are amongst the more well reviewed on computer shopping sites, but remember that you’ll need a station that is actually built for your particular make and model of laptop. The following should just give you a good idea of what’s on the market out there.
Hewlett-Packard Notebook QuickDock
The QuickDock goes for anywhere from sixty bucks used, to a hundred and forty new, and serves as basically a very fast, simple, easy to use station. With a single cable, you can connect to the internet, power, and several peripherals. It’s not the fastest or most capable docking station out there, but it gets the job done if you just need a simple, efficient station.
Sony VAIO SZ Series Docking Station
The Sony VAIO SZ Series Docking Station is a pretty simple little rig, but it’s lightweight and connects directly to the laptop, so you don’t have to disconnect it from your laptop every time you want to take your laptop out of the house. It usually sells for somewhere between $150.00 used and $200.00 new.
Lenovo Thinkpad Advanced Dock
A little pricier than most docking stations, at four hundred bucks, new, this dock offers full connectivity for desktop expansion. This is really built for notebookers who use multiple monitors, or high end graphics for gaming or digital media.
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Great review – even though the thinkpad is slightly more I definitely recommend – I am on my third and they have never let me down . Great laptops
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