Introduction

Today we're looking at a rather unique product. For many years notebook manufactures have offered docking stations for their notebook products that make it easier to move from the office or the road to your home office. These docking stations are generally model or series specific so when you bought or were issued a new notebook, you needed a new docking station.

The premise works like this, your portable notebook rests on a base station and that base station (called the dock) was connected to traditional desktop components like a display, mouse, wired Ethernet (for faster than Wi-Fi speeds) and in some cases a full size keyboard. Most notebooks are quite capable of handling desktop-like workloads, especially those using an SSD for storage, so getting the full desktop feel was natural.

The biggest downfall though was the whole model specific thing. A Dell dock will not work with a Lenovo dock which will not work with an HP and so on. To compound the problem a dock made for say a Lenovo T60 series will not work with a Lenovo W700 series. With a price that ranges from $150 to upwards of $300 depending on age and features, a new docking station to go with your new notebook adds a considerable amount of cost to your total cost of ownership.

Toshiba, coincidentally a notebook manufacturer as well, has released an improved method and builds upon the traditional features of a docking station, but removed the proprietary aspect.