First, let's start with "what is a laptop dock"? If you love the portability of your laptop, but when you take it home, you have to plug in or don't have enough ports for a printer, PC speakers, a keyboard and mouse, a larger monitor, wired internet, etc, a laptop dock is for you. For around $100 (a little pricey), you can have a single cable you plug in to your laptop at home that in turn connects to all those little desktop gadgets so you don't have to plug and unplug each time. They are very handy, and they've just gotten an upgrade. Samsung is releasing a wireless laptop dock in the form of a monitor, the Samsung Central Station. How it works is as soon as you are in range to wirelessly communicate with the station via a tiny USB dongle (barely visible) in your laptop, the screen flickers to life and all your accessories plugged into the monitor work seamlessly with your laptop, including keyboards, with no need to plug anything in. The base also allows for iPod, iPad, or iPhone charging and syncing to your computer every time it is in range. And as soon as you walk away? Everything goes black and quiet. For those of you who don't feel like going quite wireless, there's also an available standard HDMI cable for wired connections. But then it's defeating the purpose of buying a wireless dock in the first place! And, the price range is a little much, from $450 for the 23 inch version to a whopping $600 for the 27 version. You do get a screen with it, though, and a pretty nice HD wireless streaming screen at that! So is it worth it? That's for you to decide. |
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