New Docks Improve Commuter Computers

Dave Andrews

Notebook vendors are improving their docking stations as the percentage of users who buy notebooks as true desktop computer replacements increases. Docking stations complement notebooks by providing an easy way to access a network or external CD-ROM drive while harboring peripherals such as external monitors and speakers. But due to the relatively small percentage of users who bought a portable as their sole computing device, notebook vendors admit they sometimes focused their resources on designing a good notebook with the latest technologies first. The docking station came second.

That's starting to change, however. "We've seen interest in docking stations heat up in 1995 and that will continue in 1996," says Randy Giusto, manager of mobil e-computing research at International Data (Framingham, MA). Giusto estimates that the tie-in rate (i.e., the percentage of notebooks that connect to docking stations) for all noteb ooks and subnotebooks will increase slowly, from 20 percent in 1994 to about 25 percent this year. But high-end notebooks can experience tie-in rates of 45 percent or more.

The new docking station that Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA) designed for its OmniBook 5000 series of notebooks typifies this trend. HP includes a variety of I/O ports on the back of the OmniBook 5000's docking system, but it paid attention to subtle details of docking-station design as well. For example, the modular stand raises the dock, which lets you easily eject the notebook without having to move the external keyboard. You can also access a docked OmniBook 5000's PC Card slots.

As more notebooks begin incorporating Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) for improved notebook peripheral performance, vendors s uch as HP, Toshiba (Irvine, CA), and Texas Instruments (Dallas, TX) are tackling the tricky technical feat of extending a PCI local-bus slot across the docking connector. "PCI is the architecture of the future," says Steve Gonzalez, senior product marketing manager for the docking solutions program at TI. "It gives better performance in the notebook. But if you don't pass the PCI signal directly out through the docking station, the performance of the PCI peripheral on the docking station itself suffers."

A new technology that could change docking-station designs is the Universal Serial Bus (USB), which should start showing up in products this year. It's an external I/O interface with a maximum 12-Mbps data transfer rate that will consolidate a wide range of ports found on the back of notebooks into one small and inexpensive (about 35 cents) connection. USB's support for hot-pluggable devices meshes well with mobile-computing needs, and its consolidation of several connectors should result in less expen sive docking-station solutions. In some cases, where the docking station's main purpose is to provide a network connection, USB may eventually eliminate the need for a docking station.