A Place To Put Your Notebook
Notebook computers are the essence of a mobile office, but they don't amount to much when you set them on your desk. A tiny screen, an equally diminutive keyboard, and a lack of peripherals make these wonders of portability seem mundane when standing still.
That's where docking stations come in. With the flip of a switch, these devices can transform your miniature notebook into a full-sized desktop computer.
"A docking station is an interface for a notebook to different peripherals," says Steve Gonzales, senior product manager for Docking Solutions at Texas Instruments.
The first docking stations started out as little more than extra connection ports for notebook computers. Now, they are used for everything from hooking up several gigabyte hard drives to surfing the World Wide Web. Some of the newer models sport the latest in Internet connectivity and have multimedia sound cards and speakers already built into the cheap laptop docking stations.
"Some peripherals are integrated into the different docking stations; others are accessible through interfaces provided by the docking stations," Gonzales says.



Md Ehsan