Teacher Laptops and USB-C Docking Stations

[DalekSec]

We've had about 10ish Startech USB-C Docks, working flawlessly since before Covid! With various different laptops.

[DrBeaker]

Hi All,

 

We are looking to kill 2 birds with 1 stone and issue all teaching staff with new laptops (USB-C Power Delivery capable) and replace all of the teacher workstations in classrooms with a USB-C docking station. The idea is the docks will stay in the class and be wired in to visualiser, touchscreen, ethernet that sort of thing, the teacher can just roll up and plug their laptop in via USB-C and get power and port replication.

Has anyone had any experience with going in this direction? How did it work for your school?

 

Cheers.

 

Yup, works well for us - we've stuck with Lenovo kit all round and find it reasonably reliable, except when people invariably lose cables despite being told never to unplug them, general vandalism and spilled things!

Spend the money and don't buy cheap.

Maybe a daft question - but do you have a spare/IT Testing device for testing it all works as expected?

 

Otherwise if it's all 1:1 and no spares, how do you test out any issues without having one for IT purposes.

[psydii]

Have I mentioned I hate USB-C?

 

After a Windows update my laptop was running *very* slowly. Task Manager showed the CPU was in the range of 600Mhz- 1.09Ghz.

 

I remembers seeing this

on twitter, and decided to give it a whirl. Unplugged the USB-C lead and wham! 2.6Ghz.

 

Several more iterations of troubleshooting, and I replaced the USB-C cable. Now stable at 1.8Ghx (the base speed) with frequent extended periods at 2Ghz+

[Jamm]

We Use Dynabook Portege and usb dokcing system. Couldnt fault it.

Moved to them from workstations and with one note, teachers being able to flip it flat and write with the stylus works really well.

My one complaint is that the USB-C cable does so much I havent been able to find a replacement cable that can also do it all!

[psydii]

We began using these over the summer, and haven't had to replace any so far: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B094CG51W8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

The cable that failed today came with the dock.

 

 

EDIT: Nope, not those. They had a 2m variant in the summer, not sure I'd trust a 3m one, and 0.5m is too short for what we need. God I hate amazon almost as much as usb-c.

 

EDIT2: The thing to look out for is the USB SuperSpeed 10 or SuperSpeed 20 logo. If its got that, then the chances are good that it will do the things in its description.

Edited April 21, 2022 by psydii

[ConceroEdu_Brad]

We highly recommend this solution in the classroom. Think about how much power and connectivity when choosing the dock. Also, for the office environments we like these too: LG Monitor Ergo Category Page | LG UK