If you’re like me and use your MacBook as your primary computer, complete with a constant arse-load of peripherals attached to it, then it makes sense to use a dock. A dock provides you with one place to keep your desktop peripherals plugged in, so you don’t need to do the plug-unplug shuffle with 5 different peripherals each time you want to mozy your MacBook down to the coffee shop. It also relieves your desk of the clutter that comes with keeping 4 or 5 peripherals separately attached to your laptop.
And so, BookEndz inc., has stepped up and released a docking station for the 13” MacBook, which, according to the MacNN review, is not half bad. It’s custom-fitted for the MacBook, and offers five USB ports, a full size VGA and DVI port, and a special gap that allows room for the MagSafe adaptor. The downside: there is only one FireWire port, so you won’t gain anything on that end.
It will run you $159, so if you have the cash, and a desire to declutter and simplify the peripheral aspects of your life, check this bad boy out.
Sounds like an interesting solution. Currently I use a 4 port USB and FireWire Time Machine drive, and both have to be plugged in each time I sit down at my desk.
I want one but am not sure if their audio connection is optical or not. I've written the manufacturer for clarification.
Great! Please let us know when you hear back from them, as I'm curious about this myself.
One thing to note about this is that you have to *shut down* your computer each time you want to connect or disconnect it.
This is one aspect of the Mac platform that I don't like. For all the jokes made at the expense of Dell, and a lot of them are on-the-button, I am jealous of my colleagues who can plug their Latitudes into a real docking station while I need to manually connect cables to my MacBook Pro when I get to work. The solution that BookEndz produces, while a solution, is a fudge and one that I'm not interested in. It may be too much to hope, but perhaps Apple will finally see docking stations as something useful and build-in at least a proper connector to their laptops so that someone can make a proper solution.
@Kelmon
Agreed, actually. Having a docking station would be super convenient, and I would definitely consider it.
@Dan, in the real world you have to shut Windows down too. Try as I might, hibernate and sleep simply don't provide a reliable dock/undock experience. If you can't trust that the system will wake up and have to save everything anyway, you might as well shut down.
@Kelmon, The MBA is a better glimpse of the future than this dock. Add some Wireless USB to it and there's nothing to connect but the monitor.