caution: elder millenial rant ahead. you have been warned!
What the hell happened to laptop docks? We used to have these nice
solid docks that we could put our business/workstation laptops into
and hear a nice satisfying click or chunk. Once you heard your
laptop snap into a dock you knew it was time for business!
I know I know, we are all supposed to be living in USB3/USB-C utopia
now. Yes the proprietary connectors are bad and USB-C is universal...yeah
yeah yeah, I get it.
But my god these universal USB-C docks are genuinely flimsy pieces
of crap. I'm especially talking about the HP elitebook thunderbolt
docks which have the ENTIRE top part of the dock as the power
switch. So god forbid you try to hold the crappy dock in place
while you insert a recalcitrant USB drive, the moment you even
breathe on the top switch, you've suspended your computer. When I
first received that dock at work I wanted to honestly murder the
idiot who designed that.
The predecessor HP dock was the (proprietary) but lovely UltraSlim
Docking station which while it was the length of the laptop, was
extremely unobtrusive and still gave you that satisfying click when
locking in the laptop. Google "HP 2013 UltraSlim Docking Station"
to see what I'm talking about.
And my favorite HP dock which precedes even that ultraslim dock is
the behemoth "HP 2012 230W Advanced Docking Station" that i'm
currently rocking with my daily driver HP Elitebook 8460p. This
thing is an absolute monster with 4x USB3 ports, 2x USB2 ports,
(2x DVI ports/ 2x display ports), ethernet, VGA, 9-pin serial,
25-pin printer, eSATA, and 2x PS/2 port for keyboard and mouse.
When you slot in your already massive 2012-era Elitebook into that
monster, you know mad computing shit is about to throw down.
Nowadays we get these crappy, chintzy, glorified USB hubs that
weigh virtually nothing and require 2 hands to even plug anything
in.
