looking a docking station and laptop combo if possible. I need to have the docking station capable of dual monitors.

I haven't seen a dual monitor docking station and I haven't seen any combo docking station buys. It has been awhile since i have setup a docking station and I remember it being a bitch on windows NT. Has it gotten any easier?

2/4/2010 9:45:51 AM

I use a docking station with both my work machines, one is an HP, and one is a Lenovo, the Lenovo is XP, the HP is Vista. I find the vista one signficantly easier to dock and undock. The XP one has issues with it going from dual screens to the single screen when I undock and just generally whines and bitches about it, and sometimes doesn't find the second screen when docked from a single, but if I basically dock and undock with the thing in sleep mode, it seems to do ok. The vista one, no issue at all.

Are you meaning you want to have two monitors in addition to the laptop screen, or that you want to have the laptop screen be one of the monitors, because all the ones I've used let you have the laptoo screen as one of the monitors.

2/4/2010 9:52:11 AM

We have dell d830's and e5500/6500's with docking stations at work and they work great. Extremely easy to setup and configure for dual external monitors or single external + laptop display. They definitely get pissed sometimes if you undock the laptop powered up without hitting the undock button on the docking station.

2/4/2010 10:14:04 AM

because of this thread, i looked into macbook docking stations and found this http://eshop.macsales.com/item/BookEndz/BEMB13W/ pretty cooool, especially with the dvi out

2/5/2010 12:49:12 PM

ATI/Nvidia display managers do a pretty good job detecting different displays and resolutions on those displays. Windows still sucks when it comes to doing that.

It looks like the Lenovo docking stations have a built in half-size pci-express slot, which could have endless possibilities with it.

2/5/2010 9:43:00 PM

Quote :

"I need to have the docking station capable of dual monitors. "

most "docking stations" these days are just port replicators, so the capability of dual monitors is going to depend on the hardware in the laptop. my lenovo t60p with a port replicator supports dual external monitors. As someone else posted, they make a true docking station with a pcie slot as well.

my biggest complaint about macbooks and macbook pros is the lack of support for dual external monitors -- without having to buy bulky third party hardware.

2/7/2010 11:09:41 AM