Docking Station?

[mikez]

The inconvenience of accessing the card underneath the adapter.
I was referring to this part of the post:

I just really want to have a way to plop down and plug my laptop into my desk. Just one plug and done like the proprietary docking ports for full sized business laptops.

I was thinking that anyone bothered by having to plug in more than one plug will
find inserting and removing the SDHC card while the ExpressCard adapter is plugged
in to be totally, completely, intolerable.

[mikez]

The inconvenience of accessing the card underneath the adapter.
I was referring to this part of the post:

I just really want to have a way to plop down and plug my laptop into my desk. Just one plug and done like the proprietary docking ports for full sized business laptops.

I was thinking that anyone bothered by having to plug in more than one plug will
find inserting and removing the SDHC card while the ExpressCard adapter is plugged
in to be totally, completely, intolerable.

[extragoode]

I see. That does make sense. I wasn't too worried about that, though, because I plan to use a small aftermarket SSD(16 or 32GB) as the main drive and use the SDHC slot as a sort of E drive or data drive since it can be inserted flush and wouldn't be changed all that frequently. I hope to do all the frequent swapping with USB drives, but all this is theory for now since I have yet to purchase any of the aforementioned hardware.

[extragoode]

I see. That does make sense. I wasn't too worried about that, though, because I plan to use a small aftermarket SSD(16 or 32GB) as the main drive and use the SDHC slot as a sort of E drive or data drive since it can be inserted flush and wouldn't be changed all that frequently. I hope to do all the frequent swapping with USB drives, but all this is theory for now since I have yet to purchase any of the aforementioned hardware.

[Steel-Toe Geek]

I've been using the docking station Tower by Toshiba and it works well. I've also got the Belkin Wireless Flip KVM switch linked into my network. I've got the Mini 2133, a Gateway 14" laptop, my Ingignia Tower, a Mac Mini, 2 printers, a scanner, a label printer, and 4 LaCie Porche Design External USB hard drives, as well as a computer-operated Yaesu ham radio tranceiver all linked in a network.

The Toshiba tower allow me to dock the Mini to my speakers and a 20" wall mounted LCD monitor and the network while at home. Pretty sweet system.
Combination of a PC/Mac office and a Ham Radio Shack.


Larry
Seattle,WA

[tom3600]

Don't believe everything you hear.
Mine works as well as the on-board video, WinXP and Xubuntu.

I just got a targus ACP50US and the only thing it's good for is elevating my 2133! It was slow and I had a heckuva time getting the "mirror" function to not only work but it is so obnoxious. I'm back to plugging in the devices. Anyone want to buy a docking station???

[mikez]

Same model I have but I don't see the same behavior.

What OS?
What BIOS version?
What external devices are "too slow"?

[batitude]

I looked at the Targus and Toshiba, and am impressed with both from a specs stanpoint, and the expresscard rather than single USB makes more sense to me.

However, since neither provide power, I would either always have to remove and carry my ac brick or buy another one.

With the prices of the 2133, and the new netbooks, I am not willing to spend the money for two docking stations plus one ac adapter - that adds up to about what I could buy a second machine for!

I have my 16GB SD card on order, which will hold all of the data I care to carry between home and office (especially since I can connect via internet both ways...).

Sounds like a second mini for me, or wait for the 2140, or go for the Lenovo Ideapad S10...

I am a computer junkie if you couldn't tell - currently running 3 at work, and between my wife, 2 kids, and daughters fiance, we have 6 laptops and 7 desktops that all could be in use at home.

Writing that out made me think that maybe it is time to downsize...

[mikez]

@self -> Been trying to "down size" for a couple of years now.
Technology is being good to us who have decided we want some room back
into our rooms.
Not only the 'carry it with you' category of machines - -
But smaller form factor, more energy efficient, replacements for the 'desk side,
(mini) tower' category of machines.
- - - -
For the 'what did you get yourself for Christmas' topic -
I got one of the Shuttle boxes - about the size of a large breadbox -
Intended by Shuttle to be a 'media center' machine, so it 'looks nice' -
Having a technical background, I ordered the 'barebones' version which let
me pick and choose the processor, memory and disk drives -

Since this machine was to replace my main development machine - which died
last winter - I made performance choices -

After two months - I still like it - it sits on a bookshelf above my work table -
quite and cool - just minds its own business -
Which is about five times the processing of the old (full, server sized tower)
development machine and about ten times the processing power of what I
am typing on at the moment (a mid-tower sized box).

It weighs in at around ten pounds - so the wire bookshelf is in no danger of overload.

The liquid, convection mode, cooler looked strange - but it does the job well.
The 'cold side' radiator is air cooled by the case exhaust fan - looking at it,
it is surprising it can cool a 95w processor - but it does.

C2Quad (Q9300) @ 2.5Ghz; 2, dual-channel, ddr2, 2G ram cards (4G total);
dual (RAID-1), 250G, SATA-2, 7,500rpm disk drives - - mounting bracket mod'd
so I could put drive cooler fans on them.

No added in cards, using the G33 chipset's HDMI output to a DVI-D monitor - -
There is a 16x PCIe slot in there for a high performance video card - but I don't
do games or run it as a 'media center' - so the stock chipset does fine.

After two months - still satisfied with it - and for right at $600 + a bit.

[batitude]

That box sounds great!

About 2 years ago, I started with a Buffalo NAS for network storage, shut down 2 machines that really were doing nothing but providing network storage.

Next was starting to move to VMWare VM's where I previously had either multiple machines, or machines with swapable drives where I could boot into different versions. Now, after adding a couple of terrabyte drives I am down to 1 desktop (for me), with around 20 VM's of various flavors. Just upgraded to 8GB of RAM for $45, so now I can even run around 4 of them at the same time without performance degradation - except Vista of course - it drags everything down.

Even installed Server 2008 the other day in a VM! Now to just get rid of the 5 or 6 old desktops that I don't need any more, but are too good to through away, but old/slow enough that can't get much for them...

Dream box now would be something like yours - multi-processor, multi-core, with even more RAM - but I really am fine for a couple of years anyway!

Maybe this weekend I will go through what I have and post them on Craig's List, and start trying to get something before the other machines get too old...