Kensington unveils world's first wireless USB docking station, with DVI monitor support
I have been using a laptop as my main computer for a few years now: part of the allure of the professional blogging gig (besides addressing several ten thousands of readers everyday girded in the smug confidence that comes from knowing that you are naked and they have no idea) is that one can work from anywhere: the office, the toilet, the brothels of Mauretius. It does come with certain small drawbacks though. For me, the small niggling point of using a laptop as a main computer is coming back to the desk and having to slither a thousand electron-bearing tentacles around, plugging them into the appropriate ports. My secondary monitor needs to be plugged in, my speakers need to be plugged in, external hard drives and mouse need to be plugged in. It takes all of thirty seconds. But it grates.
So Kensington's newest product — the world's first wireless USB docking station — has me humming and hugging myself. It supports five USB devices as well as a DVI monitor. Get within 15 feet of the transmitter and everything just automatically connects. Magic!
It's $230, which seems a bit expensive to thwart thirty seconds worth of light inconvenience, but I've been known to make more extraneous purchasing decisions. More problematic, at least for me: it only works under Vista. My MacBook Pro jeers and flashes its kilted nethers in your direction, Kensington.
Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station [Kensington]
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Another way that this might be useful: out here in the muddy regions we get lightning strikes that destroy equipment all the time. Actual AIR in between machines might add significant electrical isolation, and thus increased lifespan, to your devices.
Apple's failure to support or provide any sort of docking option has become rather frustrating. They better start supporting them or start selling a JesusDock or I'll...keep buying their crap anyway. But I'll feel bad about it. I hope they're happy.
So let's do the math here.
A very modest display has 1,024 pixels x 768 pixels x 16-bit color x 60 Hz = 90 megabytes of video data per second.
The 802.11g standard has a maximum *theoretical* throughput of 54 Mbps (that's "b" as in bits) = 6 megabytes of video data per second.
Even the still-in-development 802.11n standard has a maximum *theoretical* throughput of 300 Mbps = 37.5 megabytes per second.
So even at max throughput - and even presuming that you don't want to use your network for, y'know, actual data transfer - we're NOWHERE NEAR being able to stream full video data over a network.
So what is Kensington selling? Well, it has to reduce quality by a vast amount (to, say, 5-10Hz), or do some kind of "this area of your screen hasn't changed so we won't send it" computation, which pretty much rules out gaming and videos. Or both. All of these scenarios suck.
Or Kensington is just plain lying, I guess. Or its entire fleet of engineers is so incompetent as to not realize that these promises are woefully unattainable. Not sure which is worse.
- David Stein
"the smug confidence that comes from knowing that you are naked and they have no idea"
Oh, we know. Believe me. We know.
I eliminated the speaker plug from my docking with a Griffin iMic ... audio now goes through USB. Taking the number of cords I have to plug in from five to four (now it's DVI, USB, FireWire, power) made what felt like a big difference!
strictly speaking, Brownlee, a fez on your shameful dome does not still count as "naked"
Mauritius.