I am a very mobile user and have a dedicated setup for my notebook at home. I’d love a port replicator, but Sony doesn’t make one. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with those universal ones?

Thanks,
Erik

Not strictly a “port replicator”, but this is what I use to dock the TR at home… See http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB20DOCK 

It is clearly not top of the line, but does work fine for me and you can’t beat $43

Takes one USB 2.0 port and gives you two PS2 (keyboard and mouse), three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 1.1, one paralel printer and one DB9 serial (wich I was missing in my TR).  The PS2 ports work fine with my KVM, so I normally keep one of my servers at my desk and dock the TR sharing the keyboard, mouse and monitor.  The sliding shelf under the desk,  were the keyboard is supposed to go, accomodates the TR nicely and out of the way.

Regards,
Marcelo

What do you think about
Kensington Universal Docking Station with Ethernet
http://www.kensington.com/html/3721.html
Is it worth the money ?

Thx Mike.

[quote author=“mfabre”]Not strictly a “port replicator”, but this is what I use to dock the TR at home… See http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB20DOCK 

It is clearly not top of the line, but does work fine for me and you can’t beat $43

Takes one USB 2.0 port and gives you two PS2 (keyboard and mouse), three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 1.1, one paralel printer and one DB9 serial (wich I was missing in my TR).  The PS2 ports work fine with my KVM, so I normally keep one of my servers at my desk and dock the TR sharing the keyboard, mouse and monitor.  The sliding shelf under the desk,  were the keyboard is supposed to go, accomodates the TR nicely and out of the way.

Regards,
Marcelo

I’ve never used the Kensington, but at least in my case, I was looking just for the serial port… getting everything else for $43 was good enough

I guess if you need the ethernet port, paying $85-$100 (although they claim a $129 street price) for the kensington replicator is not a bad deal… That said, if you have a laptop recent enough to include USB 2.0, chances are that the machine already has an ethernet port included, right?

The real deal is how the USB 2.0 hub performs in your scenario… let’s say that your are planning to use your “port replicator” to add a couple of heavy bandwidth devices, like a couple of external high speed hard drives, you may want to go for the best possible quality.

For regular use, they seem to be all made in China from the same components, so I’d get the cheaper one that does what I need.

Regards,
Marcelo

Picked up the kensington tonight for $85 shipped from buy.com, hope it’s worth the money.

Erik

Please let us know how do you like it ?

[quote author=“tifosiv122”]Picked up the kensington tonight for $85 shipped from buy.com, hope it’s worth the money.

Erik

[quote author=“mikeny”]Please let us know how do you like it ?

[quote author=“tifosiv122”]Picked up the kensington tonight for $85 shipped from buy.com, hope it’s worth the money.

Erik

I’ll post a review when I get it.

Erik