Latitude Docking station

In a word, awesome. This thing has everything, VGA, DVI, 5 USB ports, a spot to put your second battery/optical drive, printer port, S-video, speaker/headphone port, PS/2x2, ethernet, and modem. Ontop of that it has a FULL PCI CARD SLOT! So you can put a full desktop PCI card in the docking station and have access to it on the side of the station. great for like a firewire card, sound card, or what I plan on using it for, a TV tuner so I dont have to deal with an external one. You might be able to put a phys-x card in it if they have PCI ones too.

So I've got my speakers, mouse, printer, external HD, 17" CRT, and newwork all plugged into here and all I need to do is just drop it in, it takes about 5-10 seconds for everything to get all detected and stuff (like the display and printer etc) and boom, its call connected. SO easy and so worht it. I like to take my laptop into bed to watch movies at night, and this way I dont need to deal with any cables or anything at all I just put it in here and its done.

Before this I was really against using docking stations cause I thought they were big anf a hassel and stuff, but after using this (Its like $300 normally, but I got it as a refurb I guess off ebay for $100, it was in a brown Dell box and it ws sealed in the plastic and came with the power cord) I would totally reccomend this to any Latitude User. I got a wired USB mouse with this because I wasnt planning on getting a docking station at the time, and RF mouses are kind of a hassle with a laptop w/o a docking station, but if you have one that would be great, I have a microsoft one but it stopped working.

My only one issue that maybe someone could help me with is my second monitor. I've got a 512MB nVidia NVS 120m Quadro with turbocache (256MB discrete, 256MB from system RAM) so it should be more than powerful enough to run even the 30" Dell, and I've got a 17" Dell CRT that I'm pretty sure can do 1600x1200, but its only doing 1280x1024, maybe this is the most it can do but I'm pretty sure I had it doing 1600x1200 in linux before. If anyone has any hints it would be very helpful, I can do a full review but I'm not sure what to do to submit one, I tried to do a review of the D820 but I never got a responce from any of the mods so I'm not sure what to do.

 

also, since it puts the laptop at a slight slant like a desktop keyboard its nicer to type on for extended periods of time, that is if you dont use an external KB, but I like the keyboard on the D820 a lot so I'm set with it.

 

Ditto on the use of docking station with my D800. It's heavenly and works great.

To Dell's credit, when I upgraded from a D610, I didn't have to buy a new docking station to use with my D820.

 

I love the docking station with my M1710. It's awesome not having to plug everything into my system every time I move the computer.

 

The D/Dock is something that is quite useful. Horribly overpriced from Dell (I went ebay as well), but compltely worth it however you get it. The locking mechanism was a little confusing at first, but I figured it out after a little bit. I wish I could add a cooling pad to this somehow, but the slight elevation does some help for ventilation. I'm a little afraid I wont have enough desk space in my dorm however....

 

Well I've got a 17"CRT and a Printer hooked up to my docking station, I really hope I'll have enough room in my dorm!!

Mine never gets hot enough to need a cooling pad espically with the air flow underneath when its in the docking station

 

Try plugging your monitor into the external port on the LAPTOP and see how high it will go. It should be able to support a bigger monitor. Man I wish I had a Latitude with the docking station. lol

 

well I dont think its an issue of support sometimes it just only goes to this high of a res, and Idont need the extra space at all, my laptop is WUXGA, I like like having a seperate window for my buddy list and iTunes and stuff like that