Kensington's Notebook Expansion Dock with Video
By Evan Blass 
posted Jun 6th 2006 9:15PM
posted Jun 6th 2006 9:15PM
Just as we anticipated, Kensington has released that laptop dock we heard about a few months ago featuring Newnham Research's "NIVO" technology for connecting external monitors through a USB connection. Using only one USB hook-up to your notebook, the wedge-shaped (for keeping your machine cool) Notebook Expansion Dock supports multiple USB devices, Ethernet networking, desktop speakers, and a monitor as big as 17-inches at 1,280 x 1,024 pixels and 32-bit color. You can start turning your laptop into a desktop replacement immediately, for $180.
targus has been making this for the past 5 months, http://www.targus.com/us/accessories_connectivity.asp
And it is 129.99
D
The difference between the Kensington and Targus pieces is that the Targus only supports up to 1024x768 @ 16-bit, while the Kensington supports up to 1280x1024 @ 32-bit. Well worth the price premium IMHO.
Kenshington is better than Targus in terms of performance with external monitors. I've had problems with Targus being sluggish on my external monitor but Kenshington seems fine.
I bought this thing a while back and finally connected it to my Inspiron notebook after I bought a Samsung monitor. The monitor came with a standard VGA cable, but I have no way to connect it to the dock. Do I have to buy a special adapter to plug into the USB port? It has a 9 pin male port which I can't connect to either. Am I missing something?
BEWARE: If you have VISTA... A call today to tech support revealed that KENSINGTON does NOT offer Windows Vista support on this product. Driver will install but display does not work....
does kensington plan to add a driver for Vista for the notebook expansion dock?
there is a update for the driver at the following site
http://us.kensington.com/html/12118.html