Docking 201 – Second in a Two Part Series
Today we’ll look at what I promised last time – a more advanced look at docking and some of the things that ThinkPad engineers have to trade off as they are designing next generation docking solutions.
Docking is one of those subjects that makes me cringe whenever a customer brings it up in conversation. It means one of several things, none of them particularly enjoyable to talk about: End of life for current docks, lack of a needed port, compatibility issues, or functionality problems. All people who use docking seem to have a strong opinions on the subject. While there are some similarities, there is very little consensus as to what the “ideal” solution is.
Just a reminder, for purposes of this post, I am using “docking” as a generic term to mean anything that allows cable management on a notebook PC. When the differences are important, I will break out and delineate them.
USB DOCKING
When we design a docking solution for a product, it is not just as easy as putting a connector on it and that’s it. The easiest way out is to use a USB port already on the system. As vendors we do not need to do anything special to the notebook. A user simply plugs in their USB port replicator and it works. The disadvantage is that while USB is ubiquitous, it has major bandwidth limitations, allowing only 480 Mb/s data transfer rates. This is just nowhere near enough to have high quality digital video + Gigabit Ethernet + other USB devices. While USB 3.0 would seem to be a solution and is on the horizon for next year (if the industry gets its act together and stops bickering), it still will not be fast enough. While the standard will up the speed to 4.8 Gb/sec, this is barely adequate for full high definition video and will not be enough for video plus all of the other devices you may want to connect. However, it will bring about a radical improvement and may end up being adequate for many.
DEDICATED DOCKING
To get around the bandwidth problems, vendors add their own proprietary connectors underneath or on the sides of their systems. Putting a connector on the side of a system is most convenient for the user, but doing so takes up valuable real estate that could be used by additional ports. Putting the connector on the bottom solves the space utilization problem, but it does require special design consideration so that the user does not have to “hunt” to try and find the proper alignment to snap the notebook in place on the dock. An additional disadvantage to bottom docking connectors is that they add thickness and therefore weight to the system.
If you look at a docking connector closely, you’ll see two to four rows of closely spaced wires (or “pin outs” as they’re commonly known in the industry). Each of these pins has a dedicated function and connects directly into the notebook’s expansion bus for maximum speed and compatibility. Some minor functions like PS/2, serial, or floppy disk drive functionality only require one pin or so. Other more advanced bandwidth-hungry functions such as video or Ethernet require 2 or more wires to successfully transmit data back and forth. There are also wires dedicated to providing power and grounding. As we add more functions, ThinkPad engineers have to start making tradeoffs as there simply aren’t enough wires to do everything we want. Want more than 2 USB ports externally? There go 4 additional wires? DVI? Twelve. And so on…
We could theoretically add more wires and get around this, but as the docking connector size increases there are not only electrical issues to solve, but the connector gets to be so physically big that it takes up valuable real estate on the notebook itself. This is why our X Series Ultraportable ThinkPads do not share a common dock with our T, R, and Z series notebooks. The docking connector is physically smaller which makes it incompatible with the docks its bigger cousins use. Our Product Marketing team determined that adding the same size connector as the T and R series would have grown X Series thickness and weight to unacceptable levels for an ultraportable (where size and weight are THE considerations).
In fairness, not everyone shares this same view. There are customers who would much rather have common docking with the rest of the product line and would be happy to have thicker and heavier ultraportables to achieve this. In fact, one of our customers, a large retailer in the UK, actually buys our old ThinkPad X31 notebooks on the tertiary (!!!) market just so that they can have common docking with their current port replicators and docks that they have installed in their hot desk environment.
COMMON DOCKING
Another common question I commonly get goes something like this: Docking is SO expensive for me as a customer and I don’t like to manage the complexity of having multiple expansion devices in my user environment. Why can’t you just keep the same ones you have always had for 5, 10, or even 50 years?
Though many people accuse us of the contrary, we don’t want to change docking solutions. We don’t want to drive customer dissatisfaction. Many customers upon hearing that they will have to update their expansion options use it as an opportunity to go out to RFP. The line of thinking goes something along the lines of “Well, if I have to spend money to update my fleet of expansion docks anyway and start fresh, I might as well use the opportunity to see what other vendors have to offer.” Customers are won and lost over docking changes.
We change docking primarily to add functionality and secondarily to add usability improvements. If you still had your docks from five years ago, you’d still be connecting with USB 1.1. You’d also only have one or two USB ports. There would be no digital audio out, your video resolution out would be extremely limited, and so forth. From time to time, as the industry changes, vendors must change docking simply to keep up with the times. On the horizon are other “must have” ports like DisplayPort or USB 3.0. Each of these will require architectural changes (i.e. more pins) in order to accommodate them. While vendors strive for compatibility with older systems, sometimes adding support for the latest and greatest means changing the number of pins and/or changing what each pin does. You don’t want your ThinkPad trying to get a video signal from the power input, for example.
RIP AND GO
Another question: “Why do I have to push the eject button on my port replicator or dock. Why can’t I just rip it off the port replicator and go?” Everyone, especially our usability team, would love this to be so. Unfortunately this is out of our control. Architecturally, the way Windows is written, taking a device off without notifying the operating system can cause “bad things” to happen. Bad things can be anything from system hangs to data loss, to blue screens of death. You are much more likely to have a problem if you have a “legacy” serial or parallel device connected to your port replicator or dock. If you just use USB devices, you’ll probably get away with it, but play in the deep end of the pool at your own risk.
WIRELESS AND THE FUTURE OF DOCKING
I’ve saved the most interesting part for last. Long term, physical docking becomes irrelevant. Just about every problem we have with docking today can be solved with a wireless docking solution. The one exception is power. There is no way that wireless power is going to be ready for mainstream use anytime in the next few years.
Wireless docking in theory sounds like a panacea. Just plug all of those wires into a centralized wireless hub, and then use radio waves to bounce the signals back and forth from the wireless hub to the notebook PC. You can literally sit down at your desk and be connected to your peripherals instantly.
Alas, what will be perfect in the future ain’t ready today. (Bad grammar for emphasis). Again, we get back to the problem of bandwidth. There just isn’t enough. The most promising technology is Ultra-wideband (UWB) which is a very efficient way of transmitting high amounts of data over short distances using a wide portion of the radio spectrum. It is pretty much interference free and a currently shipping standard. You may know the technology by its commonly used name, Wireless USB, which is a software protocol imposed on the physical UWB medium. If that last statement left you totally confused, don’t worry. It’s not that important.
UWB technology is very good and very fast, but it still isn’t fast enough for PC needs. One problem is that its range falls by the square of the distance between the hub and the radio. A reader asked about a competing vendor who has been shipping wireless port replicators and why their range was so limited. This signal fall off problem is why that is so.
With time the engineers will find a way to add more wireless bandwidth to systems. For now, it is possible to use things like compression to increase the effective bandwidth. This is often done with video in which an interface out of the graphics processor intercepts the raw data, compresses it, and then sends it to the wireless hub. Once it arrives, the process is repeated in reverse and the image shows up on your display screen. The subsystem is intelligent enough to send only the changes in the image and thus save bandwidth. When you are using something like an email program, this is not an issue. However, crank up your copy of the Matrix and start watching the lobby gunfight scene, and you’ve got some problems. And this is only for one display. Adding support for a second display means that you need to at least double the bandwidth.
I hope this post provided some more insight into the world of docking. Feel free to expound or ask questions in the comments.
As I mentioned in the last post, we are actively soliciting feedback and opinions on future docking possibilities. If you would be willing to provide some feedback by participating in this survey, our team would be very interested what you have to say. We will not use your information for marketing purposes (i.e. sell you out). Here’s the link. If there’s interest, I’ll share some of those findings from the survey with you all at a future date.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Thank you for this much appreciated insight into what difficulties manufacturers face when designing docking solutions. The need to occasionally change the docking interface has always been a no-brainer for me, but I never really thought about size and pin count. This helped me understand why you’re using different docking connectors on your smallest ThinkPads.
However, I’m feeling a bit dissatisfied with the wireless docking part. Wireless USB offers Hi-Speed USB bandwidth (480Mbps), and according to the WiMedia Alliance, there are no standards with higher bandwidth at the moment. But the technology allows for more.
Of course you cannot transmit gigabits of data per second through several walls, but that’s not what docking is about. Docking means putting your computer in a specific place and using it like a desktop computer. That’s a distance of a few centimeters between laptop and dock. Hence, the question about short range is beside the point. A wireless docking interface does not need to offer a range comparable to WLAN or Bluetooth. If you want to use your printer from everywhere in the house, you’d use a Wireless USB connection rather than the docking connection. You wouldn’t use Bluetooth for RDP if you had 802.11n WLAN either, would you?
To my knowledge, there is no standard that could be used for docking yet. But Lenovo have developed a docking connector. Why shouldn’t they develop a proprietary wireless docking interface on top of an existing UWB physical layer specification such as the WiMedia UWB platform? This specification is already being used for Wireless HD which in its first generation implementation transmits 4Gbps over ten meters, and it allows for up to 25Gbps at the physical layer.
Shouldn’t it be possible to use this existing technology to design a wireless docking interface that meets even the requirements for multiple display connections and Gigabit LAN?
June 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hi Matt,
Congratulations for this interesting written article.
Stay up-to-date with the Wireless USB developer scene and visit my blog for the latest news. (RSS feed available)
June 7th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Hello!
I just discovered this blog. Very interesting stuff. Nice to see that lenovo is actively in touch with the community. There is, however, one thing that troubles my mind. I read somewhere that Lenovo is starting to phase out IPS panels from the Thinkpad range and I think that is a very big shame. I know that it is in part due to the sloppy performance by your main supplier, but I believe that a corporation the size of Lenovo shouldn’t have too much trouble in finding a steady supply of 14″ or 15.4″ IPS panels. The TN panels really, really suck. Horrible viewing angles and inaccuracies in colour production. I sincerely hopy you guys reconsider this or at least try to reintroduce them in the future.
Thanks
June 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
matt, will USB 3.0 carry enough bandwidth for a more universal external docking solution? using USB could also help mitigate the issue with hot undocking and make the actual process of undocking quicker. it wouldn’t eliminate data loss when connected to a USB hard disk drive but the dame data loss would occur if the drive itself were disconnected prematurely anyway.
i know that lenovo’s policy isn’t to talk about upcoming products but is anything in the pipeline for wireless USB now that the X300, T61/p, and upcoming models have the capability? i’ve had wireless USB in my thinkpads for nearly a year and there still isn’t any good use for it.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
See this as one of many reasons the industry stagnates with regards to introducing new technologies, in this case USB 3.0.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1078.....g=nefd.top
I can’t take sides. We are partners with both sides of the argument, but geez, I wish everyone would just get along and realize that all this does is stagnate innovation in the industry.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
matt – thanks for that link. i had no idea USB 3.0 was such a heated issue. that’s sad.
i’d love to see USB 3.0 replace everything including display connectors. sure, displayport still has that “new baby” smell but a universal connector would mean docks/replicators could instead be replaced by a simple hub rather than a complicated device that designers could work with rather than work around. backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices means that nothing needs to be alienated in the switch.
with that said, UWB would carry the convenience factor but can’t carry the bandwidth needed for high-resolution video, audio, and a host of USB devices. seeing UWB released at 480Mbps meant it was deprecated before it launched. if i were in charge of docking development at lenovo, i’d skip UWB altogether and push for globally-universal USB 3.0—and i even added the intel UWB card to my X300 just in case.
UWB wireless USB should be reserved to replace bluetooth (something i would like to see happen).
wireless is convenient but i’ve always been a fan of cables for both speed and security reasons—USB and ethernet especially. if the USB 3.0 battle gets ironed out then that’s the direction i’d like to see docking go as it would be about as “universal” as it gets.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I don’t know much about the complexity of the docking systems but I was wondering if it was possible to create a low-cost “adapter” that would allow smaller laptops to use a dock for a larger laptop. Or is the circuitry completely different in the different dock connectors?
June 9th, 2008 at 12:24 am
By the way, is it also possible for docks to be an external PCI-Express connector so that it is possible for docks to have changing functionality?
June 9th, 2008 at 2:19 am
My opinion is that a laptop without docking solution is worthless. This is one of the main reasons I purchased the T60p, because it has the Advanced Dock. The Advanced Dock could expand my laptop into virtually workstation if the PCIE slot would be full feature and full size. I understand that there are power requirements for such graphics cards, but isn’t the dock staying on the desk, since I don’t have to lug it around I don’t care how big or heavy it is.
A laptop by it’s definition as portable PC has to be small and light and to have enough battery life to allow the user to work for at least 6hrs. Unfortunately the industry is driven by the common people demands for which bigger means better, and who’s laptops sit on a desk and doesn’t need to carry around everyday. I cannot understand what is the purpose of a 17″ laptop with a battery that last 30′, it would be better to get rid of the battery and add another hard drive or mount an internal power supply; the battery would exhaust it’s lifecycle due to overheating and repetitive charging.
I own a 14″ T60p and I do CAD 10-14 hrs a day, I use it as a workstation, while in office I do all work, in field I have to do only revisions, printing, presentations, data downloading from data collectors. This is all you can do with a laptop in the field, the screen is too small for real CAD, even at 17″ with 1920×1200 pixels it is too small for serious CAD. For real CAD 2×19″ or better 2×22″ are required. There are laptops with 2 graphics chips onboard, it would be practical in field to have a GPU that can satisfy minimum requirements for entertainment and some light CAD work as mentioned above and in the office dock it with Advanced Dock that gives you full blown PCIE, another HDD, maybe with internal hdd mirroring possibility, practically turning the laptop into a real workstation. Such a dock will extend the life of a laptop because usually GPU requirements of CAD and gaming surpass the CPU needs. This way the laptop will have replaceable graphics card.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:03 am
I was very vocal about my distaste for USB port replicators as a docking solution but the new one using DisplayLink is actually very impressive – I played the matrix revolutions on it (on a system that didn’t have that annoying no protected content over USB issue) and it barely stuttered – compared to the older port replicator which stuttered when moving your mouse.
I see there are other DisplayLink devices support 1920×1200 resolution over DVI which would be interesting on a USB dock.
One thing I would like to see is more managability on the replicator – it would be nice if I could set what had priority for the bandwidth – the adaption is quite good but sometimes it would be nice to trade off USB/ethernet speed in order to keep the video smooth.
I’d also still like to see an expresscard dock from Lenovo, not much good for the X300, but it would be a good option for other ThinkPads (particularly when X series makes the move to the new slot) and *shudder* Lenovo 3000 – 2.5Gbps combined with some sort of software enhancement similar to DisplayLink and it would meet most users needs.
Erik, if your in an area where you can get UWB on your ThinkPads then you should be able to get the Belkin wireless USB dock – seems like a good use for the technology to me, you could even link it with the Lenovo USB port replicator and get a wireless dock right now
June 9th, 2008 at 11:24 am
snife – where did you find displaylink devices capable of 1920×1200 over DVI? the maximum i’ve seen from those listed on displaylink.com are 1680×1050 (8:5) and 1600×1200 (4:3). i’d love to drive my thinkvision L220x over USB DVI using my X300 but have yet to find a 1920×1200-capable USB displaylink device.
the belkin CWUSB hub is a novel idea but i don’t have a need for a remote hub right now. if it could also carry a 1920×1200 display signal then i’d consider it, although i still prefer cabled connections to eliminate the possibility of a display blanking out or data lost in transit because of a dropped signal.
an expresscard dock would fall to the same fate as both USB 2.0 high speed and UWB due to the 480Mbps limit. this isn’t enough bandwidth to drive everything needed in a robust docking solution. plus, expresscard will eventually be replaced—especially if USB 3.0 comes to fruition.
can you tell that i like the idea of USB 3.0?
vali – you can install two HDDs in your T60p using the lenovo ultrabay slim drive adapter. there is no provision for hardware RAID, however, limiting you to either software RAID (which is a poor alternative in my opinion) or a backup solution.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hello,
I was just wondering what the deal is with Thinkpad.com. I was in the market for the new slim 13.3″ laptops, and came across the IBM I.T. division. This is a big turn off for consumers and I can definitely see it scaring some people away. People want to see the nice friendly Lenovo site on Thinkpads as the first result on Google and the most intuitive web address, not a confusing corporate page that provides no link at all to the products they are interested in. You guys should fix that if you can and if you are aware of it.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:01 am
One thing I’ve gotten used to with a laptop is having a built-in UPS for when the power goes (be that a transformer blowing or a power cord playing tripwire). I found out the hard way that this isn’t the case when using the Advanced Mini-Dock (T61p). Even if the laptop couldn’t supply enough power to keep both itself and the docking station running, it would be great if it could at least keep things suspended. Anything one can do to reduce the chance of losing work in progress is a good thing.
Also, I recently managed to accidentally give the whole setup a nice “thwak” where the computer locked up (it almost certainly partially unmated the laptop from the docking station–at least briefly). Since there are probably bus signals and whatnot going through that connector, I’m not surprised that the laptop locked up (no response to the caps lock key and requiring holding the power button for a few seconds to recover). However, it was not quite sane again until I powered everything completely off. I rebooted a few times and every time the client security stuff complained that I had recently changed my password (I had not and kept entering my old password). I finally turned everything off, undocked the laptop, unplugged the battery, and then things were finally back to normal when I started things up again. I’m not sure if it was the laptop or the minidock that had gone loopy, but it would be better if it had failed a little more gracefully (e.g., not confusing the security hardware). I realize that getting hardware to fail in a predictable, controllable fashion is more than a little difficult…
June 11th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I have never been interested in docking options, if we forget the era of 386 and 486 notebooks, none of which I actually owned. Seeing how many people use their notebooks with docks, I simply don’t see point in these computers having batteries, and often even LCD’s or keyboards.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Is it possible to use two USB ports to double the bandwidth between the dock and thinkpad? What if I use two USB docking stations and each connect to a monitor, will it give me dual monitors?
June 12th, 2008 at 2:37 am
@A Klein (comment #1):
Designing a proprietary connector is much easier than designing a wireless protocol. As you said, the wireless technology is definitely capable of more, but currently limited by the protocol. Computer manufacturers typically only integrate existing technologies, with the cost of R&D for a new protocol left up to other parties. Therefore, I don’t think there is much incentive for Lenovo to go out of its way to create a proprietary docking protocol, as the cost would not be justifiable and the proprietary nature contradictory to ‘universal’ docking.
The logical solution would be to form a consortium of interested parties and develop a purpose-built protocol (such as Wireless HD), if it came to that. Research and development is constantly ongoing, and without a doubt, someone is working toward increasing throughput on UWB.
(I apologize if this is a bit fragmented. There were multiple directions in which this was going, but I tried to condense it to all the important bits.)
June 12th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Henric, if you dont require the serial and parallel port on the docking station, download the latest BIOS for your system and there is a new option (Config > Docking) to disable the legacy ports in the Dock and it will stop that occuring when power is removed.
Goran, the point is having a Dock when your in the office or at home but still being able to use the system when out an about so a laptop can be your main computer, particularly for those of us who like big monitors when we can have them but like to carry around as small a system as possible.
Erik, I think you may be right, I thought I had read about DisplayLink products supporting that Resolution but haven’t been able to find an actual product when i’ve looked. I too am looking forward to USB 3.0 (as long as the recent talk of different standards for AMD and Intel thing doesn’t actually come to fruition) but fear it may still be a couple of years off mainstream so Expresscard is the best we have for bandwidth at the moment.
thinkpaduser54, I feel the same, i always preferred using http://www.thinkpad.com instead of http://www.lenovo.com and it changed a couple of months back – I have no idea how IBM got to hold onto that domain when Lenovo have the brand
June 12th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I don’t like the idea of wireless docking. I need a place on my desk for the laptop anyway, so the docking station is a good placeholder to keep cups and papers away;-)
No, seriously, i need the docking station for my second DVI display, fast ethernet, power, sound and stuff, which i do not want to pipe through one (be it wired USB or some wireless solution) channel. And i do not want to see the desktop of my coworkers on my external monitor.
An interesting application for a wireless docking standard across laptop brands would be the elimination of the annoying cable work on conferences when six people of a session need to connect their laptops to the beamer without loss of time.
June 12th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
regarding intel and USB 3.0, this blog entry was posted yesterday over at intel in response to the confusion surrounding their involvement:
http://blogs.intel.com/technol.....spelli.php
June 12th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Jonathan, I’m aware of the point of having a dock (or more than one), but, once again, the way most people use notebooks is such that they don’t need notebook, but rather something like Mac Mini with a universal connector for easy attachment. I’m not saying that there are no people who have use for docks, even if it’s just for convenience sake in case of attaching multiple peripherals, but if all you do is move notebook between locations with power outlets, you don’t need battery, and if you always attach external keyboards and monitors, you don’t need them on your notebook, etc.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
goran, where are you getting your statistics to say that “the way most people use notebooks is such that they don’t need notebook” and “don’t need battery”? i’m researching usability in design and would like to read your sources. thanks.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Erik, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have any real statistic, just like this place doesn’t reflect the real usage patterns, but rather those of more enthusiastic nature.
I’ve been in a number of different environment and for a short while I had worked on a job which took me through a number of large organisation – banks, etc. – which can and want to afford Thinkpads. Majority of those machines was permanently connected to docks, external keyboards, mice and monitors, and the smaller part of users who would take them home would have similar setup there. I’m not saying that this is a general rule, but IME it is a very common pattern when docks are involved. IMHO and IME, most common users just use what they get, no matter the design logic behind it and how unsuitable it is for their particular needs.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
goran, thanks for your honesty and input.
so far my only subject has been state farm insurance. a few years ago they deployed over 36,000 thinkpad T42/T43 models to 17,000 employees. docks were used for synchronizing at the office, allowing the thinkpads to be used both on the road during appointments and travel using toll-free dial-up and used at home over wi-fi, dial-up, or ethernet depending on the agents’ available connections.
the usage pattern statistics i was given by their IT department showed that docks were typically only used at the office where road and home use tended to be notebook-only. they knew docks weren’t popular at home because very few requests were made for extra docking stations. agents were trained in using the thinkpads while mobile and presented the option of receiving extra dock for use at their own discretion (office, home travel, or whatever). while this goes againt your idea that people tend to use what they are given without question, we do have to keep in mind that this is only 17,000 employees. a larger corporate demographic (such as the 100,000+ thinkpads deployed at johnson&johnson) may yield different results.
my preliminary study still points toward USB 3.0 (or something like it) as the best connection option for a few reasons: it is easy to connect/disconnect, it can be hot unplugged with minimal risk (except data loss—which is possible when connected to any USB storage device, not just a dock), and the connector is fairly robust. SFI did report a number of broken docks so the last point is one is important.
the drawback to USB is that it could alienate those who like to use what i’ll call the “clip-on” docks like the X-series ultrabase. the ultraportables may still need an ultrabase option even if a USB docking option is offered.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I’d recommend having a look at optoelectronic coupling instead of USB 3.0. Price on transceivers have gone down considerably in the past five years. Alas, you no longer have the expertise in-house : hire-out a photonics expert.
June 13th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Erik, thanks for elaborating.
I’m not surprised by your numbers and explanations. The thing is that while the organisation in question bought a lot of notebooks for their employees, almost none of the employees in question actually moved them or, if they did, used them for more than editing a couple of xls files at home. From your description it seems to me that the users are very mobile, which is not the case in my examples.
Considering your own examples for dock usage, “docks were used for synchronizing at the office”, I’d just rest my personal case of complete lack of interest in docking. Software and USB 3 seems to be the future, anyway. Unfortunately for those few who are unhappy with that one.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Err, I can see a lot of potential confusion in my previous comment. “The organisation in question” is one of the several I’m referring to, not your insurance company.
June 15th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
My big problem with docks at the moment is that undocking is extremely reliable. I always get a message saying some hardware or other is in use and cannot be disconnected, and of course there’s no way for me to figure out how to stop it. I resorted to undocking after hibernating, but that’s extremely unusable when I want to quickly undock. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised today when I re-tried the undock button and it worked on the second try today.
June 15th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Snife, thanks for that that BIOS tip! The system now survives a power interruption (I use the dock for DVI to a second monitor and to keep the Ethernet cable in place when the laptop isn’t home, so the legacy ports aren’t all that interesting anyway).
June 16th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
As an individual user, I’m not worried too much about backwards compatibility with older docks; I just want a good dock so I can drop my tablet onto my desk when I get home and have all of my peripherals ready to rock and roll. DVI out would be at the top of my list of things to add, though, as I would like to use a large high-res display after dealing with a 12″ XGA display all day.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:27 am
I had a dock for my Thinkpad 755cx a zillion years ago and I never used it because its cooling fan was too noisy. I have an X4 Ultrabase for my X40 but never use that either (I had thought I could use my Ultrabay 2000 dvd burner in it but it needs a hard-to-find slim burner, so I got a USB external instead). But I recently got an T61 and was intrigued by the DVI port on the mini dock. What I’m trying to find out is whether the Intel x3100 graphics chip supports dual-link DVI and 30 inch monitors. Why settle for less?
Some other remarks: USB 2.0 has been pretty unsatisfying as a high speed port for external disks since it causes very high CPU load at fast transfer speeds. If USB 3.0 doesn’t fix this problem it’s useless. Firewire and eSATA are a lot better than USB2 for external disks and not just because of the raw bandwidth (20MB/sec or so is all you’ll usually get from a mobile disk anyway). Wireless sounds interesting since the old dock connectors always seemed fragile to me. I like the suggestion of an optical rather than UWB radio link since it probably has better security. Do you really want to broadcast the contents of your computer’s backplane even across the room?
I got my X61 (15″ WSXGA) with Suse Linux, turned it on and immediately saw an obnoxious EULA which misses the whole point of Linux. I erased it and installed Ubuntu Hardy which is working pretty well. I saw earlier that you had some problems with it, but I don’t remember hitting any serious snags with it (it did take a while to get all the packages I like installed). I really wanted the 1920×1600 screen and was disappointed that it was only offered with the inferior Nvidia graphics card. I wanted the Intel card because it uses less power, costs less, has open source driver support, and doesn’t crash the computer constantly. The Nvidia’s only advantage is faster fps for video games but as a professional user I don’t care about those. My main machine (even now that I have the T61) is still an A21P with the 15.4″ UXGA screen that I love. I wish you’d offer the T61 with Intel graphics and the 1920×1200 screen and dual link DVI on the mini dock (if that last part is possible). I hate widescreen but if I have to have it, I want the maximum resolution possible.
Finally, I want to remark that although it may sound odd, with a mere 4GB, the T61 is ram starved for many users such as developers. I think in any successor full sized notebooks you should put in at least four ram sockets, which would allow 8GB, or 16GB using the (still very expensive) 4GB sodimms. There is certainly enough physical space in the T61 for a couple more slots We have entered an era of software development where ram is mass storage and disks are basically serial rather than random access devices. 4GB sounds like a lot to newbies but it really gets absorbed quite fast. In the old days when configuring a computer, you’d spend about half your budget on ram. Ram is about $20/GB at Newegg right now, so a loaded T61 ($2000 or so) really should have 48GB and not 4GB. Unfortunately the number of sockets required would make that infeasible, but designers take note, these systems are in a serious state of imbalance. If I could put 16GB in my T61 I would do so in an eyeblink.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:31 am
People just think how long did the industry come to sort of common agreement on Draft N wireless protocol, sometimes bureaucracy prevents perfectly good technology from been implemented sooner. All technology must be invented by someone, and that someone likes to patent it and want royalty from its use by the industry. Sometimes companies get greedy and wants more than a fair share, i.e. Rambus’s ram implementation during the initial P4 roll outs.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I read a very interesting blog where someone suggested to combine the power adapter witha small fibre optic cable. That would give docking and power in a single plug!
All data could go over the fibre optic (multiplexed of ocurse) to a doscking unit that also contains the power supply. High rez video. USB. Firewire. LAN/WAN at 1000GB/s. PS/2. Parallel port. Serial port. You name it, fibre optic has bandwidth.
This would also mean a common docking unit across ALL lenovo notebooks. No more changing docking units between the different product series (not to mention within a series: x30, x40, x60 and x200 all have different docks).
Matt – can you give a reason this can’t be done?
June 24th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Paul – ultrabay slim drive hard to find? only on every T series since the T40 and on the Z series too, they are not hard to find for sure, I use my ultrabase a lot
As far as I am aware the Intel chipset does not support the dual link. I agree about the Intel cards and wish they would support the higher resolutions but something tells me this will be fixed soon the way external monitors are heading.
Suse isn’t the Linux distro to choose for fully open source and cost reasons – but it is the Linux distro of choice for most corporate customers due to the support – I prefer Ubuntu too but I wouldn’t use preloads on my main system anyway (whether for Linux or for Windows).
In regards to memory, 4GB is enough for most people and most dont even have that (not many people even use 64-bit OS yet), anyone that needs 16GB of RAM should probably have a ThinkStation at home for when the power is needed. There is no space to fit 4 RAM slots imho but even then, Lenovo have to wait for Intel to release a chipset to support that amount of RAM.
Alex – it would probably have to be a thick cable to do everything but one thing it cant do is power so your still 2 cables to plug in rather than just plonking your notebook on the dock on the table.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
When considering docking to gain access to a variety of resources, consider computing resources. Additional CPUs and GPUs might be very useful! OTOH, cloud computing might accomplish this by using colleague’s processors.
BTW, if you used real connectors for Displayport and LAN, these would be usable when not docked.
Why not a 10 gigabit ethernet dock usable with any laptop? Yeah, hafta have almost a full laptop in the dock, with video, etc., chips…. OTOH, can sell to users of others’ computers!
Or fibre+power…
tOM
June 25th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Snife – the cable is power and fibre-optic.
A single fibre optic is about 0.1mm thick, with plenty of bandwidth, so it wouldn’t make anything thicker.
Then just plug in a single cable into your laptop and voila – everything is connected.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Optical Cable itself is very cheap and is no more expensive than the normal copper wires that you may use, however the converter systems that converts the Optical Signal to the electrical signal that normal electronics can understand are large and very expensive (10,000 USD +). The expense of optical fiber converter box is what prevents many country from adopting optical fiber system for their broadbands on every house across the country, this is also one of the reason that T1 broadband system is so expensive to setup by the ISP providers. While, Chinese cities has a very high speed broadband system at relatively cheap price (40 mbits downloads speed through coaxial, unlimited downloads only 15 USD/month), due to the high population density of its cities.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Maybe fibre was $10k a while ago, but now 4 GB/sec is $87… http://www.buildyourowncompute.....6C6/26242C
July 10th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Hi,
thank for your post.
I have one question, about Advanced dock. There are a lot of discussion on the net, about the bottleneck between dock and notebook. For example, if you put a HDD into the enhanced bay in Advanced dock, maximum brandwich it seems to be limited to circa 37 MB/s (the disc itself can do for example 50 MB/s). So how is it?
BTW, I am with Vali, for the dock’s next generation, I would prefare an “ultimate” Dock, with Full PCIe support (two slots even better), a 3,5″ HDD bay for backups (HewlettPackard has it :/ ). Today, Advanced dock has 5 USBs, so, I have to buy PCIe-x1 USB card to handle more devices, but I cannot put a graphic card and so on.
September 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Matt,
How about a “Docking 301″ article about what NOT to do while docked, e.g., allowing ThinkVantage System Update to run and install downloaded updates. I feel the documentation (both Lenovo paper and electronic) for both the docking stations and ThinkVantage System Update do not provide the appropriate warnings and cautions about using ThinkVantage System Update when docked. Before ThinkVantage System Update installs updates (espc. BIOS updates), it should check (i.e., detect) whether a laptop/notebook is docked, defer installing any updates, and advise the user accordingly. (Why? I’m a first-time Lenovo user and now have a two-month old, totally inoperable T61p with parts (planar, I guess) on indefinite backorder. I’m not sure that the docked configuration was the problem but with Lenovo support bulletins detailing “static discharge” issues with “no-bootie” docks, it’s a leading suspect…)
November 17th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Why would you consider WUSB docking a feasible solution but not regular USB docking? Wired USB will always be faster than the wireless version available at the same time (the most you can get over WUSB right now is 180Mbps).
Also why would you think that USB 3.0 won’t be fast enough to play hi-def video over the USB link? The current USB dock from Lenovo can play back DVD quality movies fine, and with 10x the available bandwidth of USB 2.0, 1080p should be a piece of cake.
August 27th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] worth talking about. If you need a remedial docking course, you can check out Docking 101 and Docking 201. Remember that I use “docking” as a generic term to mean a way to expand the capabilities of [...]