Around 20 years ago, I used ThinkPad laptops. Back then, they were still IBM ThinkPads, not Lenovo. My primary workstation was always a laptop with an external mouse, keyboard, and display at my desk.
The ThinkPad laptops supported a docking Station you could physically ‘click’ your laptop into, and then everything on your desk was plugged into that docking station.
I remember thinking, back then, that someday we’d have a single cable you could plug in to your laptop and it would do everything. Display, power, audio, mouse/keyboard, would all run through one super cable.
Imagine the seconds I would save each morning when I plugged in my laptop! What a world it would be!
The future is now – and has been for a couple of years. I can plug a single USB-C cable into my laptop, and it gets power and connects to a display and an array of other peripherals.
Now that I live in this dream world, I look back on my past self and think: Dream bigger, nerd.
Yes, it’s convenient to plug or unplug just one USB-C cable into the laptop. But … it was even more convenient to just set the laptop on the docking station and push gently to latch it in, then push the eject button to free it. All gross movements, not fine movements requiring good eye-hand coordination. And the docking station never slid off the back of the desk.
Also … USB-C is as janky as any docking station: From time to time, it just doesn’t connect to the mouse, or the ethernet, or the scanner, all of which are connected through the USB hub on the back of the big Dell monitor. I mean, it’s cool to hide cables in the monitor arm. (The keyboard and mouse use a tiny wireless receiver.) Before the monitor, I tried a bunch of USB-C docks, all of which simply didn’t work at all.
But I’ll stop complaining. Yeah, it is an improvement.