A universal laptop docking station offers several compelling advantages over the proprietary docks offered by laptop manufacturers.
A Kensington universal dock's principle trump card is that its return of investment (ROI) can be calculated over multiple laptop life cycles thanks to its form factor agnostic design and compatibility with mainstream OEM systems running on Windows with universal USB connectivity.
A universal dock effectively extends the product life cycle over which Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is calculated. But how can you distill your desire for a universal dock into a proposal that your budget-holder will admire?
Here are the three questions you should answer when recommending switching from proprietary docks to universal docks.
Switching laptop models, let alone laptop brands, will most likely render your investment in a proprietary dock obsolete as soon as the new laptops are deployed.
Think about your average user, how likely are they to still be using their current laptop for the next 1, 2, 3 years?
Monitors are increasingly getting larger with higher resolution. If you are planning on deploying, for example, 4K monitors in the upcoming refresh cycle, you should ensure that the docking station you are picking can support the advanced resolution.
The benefit of a universal USB docking station such as Kensington’s SD4000, is to enable a laptop with a USB 3.0 port to display 4K content to an external 4K monitor, even when the laptop itself does not have a 4K graphics card.
Kensington universal laptop docking stations support corporate installation routines. While users will be able to connect the plug and play connectors themselves, and follow the on-screen prompts to install the required software in just a few minutes, administrators prefer to save their time and the time of users by deploying software installations over their network.
Corporate installation efficiencies and control benefits should not be overlooked when calculating the deployment cost of your new laptops and universal docks. Aftersales email and telephone technical support is provided by Kensington without additional service costs to administrators and users.