Is there any risk of damage when undocking a laptop?

I know that certain computer ports (such as PS/2, serial, parallel, and VGA) are not hot-swappable. This means there's a risk (maybe a low risk, but still a risk nonetheless) of damage if you disconnect a device from one of those ports while the computer is powered on.

I'm about to get a HP ZBook G2 17 with the Advanced Docking Station, and I'm planning on using the PS/2, parallel, and VGA ports on the docking station. What happens if I undock the laptop while it's still powered on, and there are devices connected to the PS/2, parallel, and/or VGA ports? Is there still a risk of damage since those ports aren't hot-swappable? Or would the docking station shield the laptop from any possible damage?

 

Does it not say in the user instruction manual? You could probably download it from the website of the manufacturer even if you don't own the laptop yet.

 

Here's the web page for the HP Advanced Docking Station: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/mpc/oas/product-detail.html?oid=5278437

When I click on "Technical Support / Manuals", it takes me to another page, and when I click on "Manuals" there, it says "There are no manuals for your selected product." When I click on "Datasheets / Documents", it takes me to another page where it says "Sorry, there are no documents available for this product."

 

I managed to find this, but it doesn't answer your question (only found through specific google search rather than navigating their sites!):
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-4732EEE&doctype=data sheet&doclang=EN_GB&searchquery=&cc=emea_middle_east&lc=en

I reckon your best bet is to e-mail hp customer support and get them to find out for you - even if you don't own the product it doesn't matter, you can say that the answer to your question is a factor in whether or not you will buy the dock, (which I guess is the case because you wouldn't be asking about it here!).

 

The whole point of a docking station is that the peripherals attached, as well as the laptop itself, are electronically shielded from nasty-ness involved with connection or disconnection from the docking system. Presumably the docking connector itself is of sufficient robustness to survive a large number of insertion/removal cycles (probably exceeding the number of cycles for ports like USB and PS/2 if they were present directly on the laptop).

I can pretty much 100% guarantee you that HP wouldn't unload something on its enterprise customers that would break for its intended usage cycle, and that is, repetitive, docking and undocking. This isn't someone's grade 9 electronics project - this is very mature hardware which has been through a few evolutions of design. There are electronics embedded into the docking station which "buffer" the circuits (and perhaps even encode them into a single electrical link) accordingly.

Seriously though, who still uses parallel for anything these days?

 

I dock and undock my Dell while powered all the time with no problems.

Electrical engineers and people who work in manufacturing are often using very old equipment that requires a parallel connection. One example is the reflow oven we put custom circuit boards in.


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The ports that are not hot-swappable mentioned are not being unplugged or plugged. The docking station port's connection is (as it is meant to).

As already mentioned in the two posts above; this is an non-issue.

 

I dock and undock all the time VGA monitor attached, no issues. I do red in the manual that it's recommended the laptop to be put in sleep, hibernated or turned off before docking/undocking event, but that's more likely to protect their backs.

 

Serial, parallel, and VGA certainly are hot pluggable and were designed with that in mind. Having said that, ho often will you really be hot plugging serial or parallel devices (does anyone still use those other than legacy or specialist applications?).