Feb 26
ASUS has just unveiled a new duo of accessories for the 2013 Nexus 7. Aside from a multi-functional dock, a new Wireless Charging Stand is now also available for owners … Continue reading
Jan 07
[CES 2014] I suppose for any self-respecting techie, one can never get enough of USB ports to go around. Having said that, USB 3.0 devices have become extremely common these days, so it is about time you made sure that the rest of your computing setup too, would be able to play nice with this particular USB standard. The IOGEAR USB 3.0 Universal Docking Station will fit the bill perfectly, where $149.95 will net you a docking station that would enhance your user experience whether you are using a laptop, Ultrabook or even a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet. (more…)
IOGEAR USB 3.0 Universal Docking Station Makes Its Mark original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Dec 05
An Apple patent application has cropped up on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website showing a smart docking station for the iPhone, something that will make using Siri from across the room a simple matter. According to the patent, the docking station has an integrated microphone that is always listening for voice commands, […]
Sep 06
Trying to break out of the box, almost literally, Griffin has remade its MultiDock charging station. The popular maker of device cases and accessories has now created a box that will not only charge your multitude of devices, but will look pretty good on your desk or counter. The original MultiDock sold by griffin sported […]
Jun 03
Belkin’s dual-video docking stations turn ultrabooks and tablets into workstations
Posted in: Today's ChiliTablets and ultrabooks are nice because, if for no other reason, of their sheer portability. With that portability comes some trade-offs, however, primarily in how effective they are as a day-in, day-out workstation device for the home or office. That is where docking stations come in, of which Belkin has just announced two – one for tablets, the other for ultrabooks. Both offer dual-video for multiple monitors, as well as a host of ports.
Officially called the Dual Video Docking Stand for Windows 8 tablets and the Dual Video Docking Stand for Ultrabooks, both utilize DisplayLink and a USB 3.0 plug-and-play cable. Belkin is aiming the docking stations at just about anyone who needs to turn their tablet or ultrabook into a workstation, with the company specifically mentioning contractors, professionals, and hot-desk environments.
The Dual Video docking stations – both varieties – offer several peripheral ports, allowing users to connect all of their items to the station itself while having the ultrabook or tablet only being tethered by a simple-to-remove-and-replace USB cable. There are slots for a printer, keyboard, Ethernet, additional USB ports, display ports, and more.
In addition, because having so many devices connected to a central station on your desktop can cause clutter, it also has integrated cable management. The tablet version of the docking station supports all slates running Windows 8 with Atom and Intel core-i processors. The ultrabook docking station, meanwhile, supports Windows XP through Windows 8. Be advised, however, that neither support devices running Windows RT.
There’s no word on pricing or availability yet.
Mobile Trax’ Principal Analyst J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., said: “Greater mobility and the need for an improved user experience are increasingly important to organizations that care about worker productivity and its impact on overall efficiency. Belkin has developed an interesting set of docking stands that really optimize the functionality of Ultrabooks, and particularly Windows 8 Tablets, in the business environment. This is a great step forward for mobile computing at the enterprise level.”
Belkin’s dual-video docking stations turn ultrabooks and tablets into workstations is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
May 23
Newly created Wiplabs Design LLC has huge plans for the future, and in order to kick things off, they will first need to launch their maiden product that they have dubbed the iDockAll. IdockAll will not be made available to the masses right away, as it needs to have that crucial user base before things can happen at the production line, considering how iDockAll is a crowd-funding project over at Kickstarter. Just what makes the iDockAll so special from all the other docks that are available in the market? For starters, the iDockAll dock will boast of a unique design which enables continuous charging of the iOS devices. For the layman, that would mean you are able to answer calls even when your device’s battery is running low, checking out private messages while synchronization, writing emails on the iPad, just about anything and everything is possible.
In a nutshell, you can do all of the above mentioned while ensuring that the lithium battery is being charged up. The iDockAll sports a minimalistic design that is so well executed; users might actually figure out that the iDockAll was a creation by the folks over at Apple themselves. The iDockAll project kicked off on Kickstarter earlier this month, and it has until the end of June to gather the relevant funds.
Here is a little bit of context on how the iDockAll came about. Apple enthusiasts Nathalie De Clercq and Kevin Wippermann are old mates who hail from Belgium and were frustrated with the difficulties of docking and displaying their iOS devices (be they iPhones, iPads or iPods) considering how docks kept on changing with each device iteration released. March 2013 proved to be the turning point, as they decided to tackle the issue themselves, resulting in the iDockAll. This is the maiden non-constraining dock that plays nice with the whole iOS product range (Lightning and/or 30pin connector) and their covers, and in line with Apple’s design philosophy, it has been crafted out of a single block of aluminum for that added touch of class.
Press Release
[ iDockAll a Kickstarter project that needs your help copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
May 01
After over a year of waiting, Belkin has finally released its Thunderbolt Express Dock. It was originally announced last year in January and was slated for a September 2012 release, but that obviously never happened. However, Belkin just launched the $299 dock yesterday, and we’ve taken the time to give it a good look-over and test it out for ourselves. Personally, as a MacBook Pro user who is constantly docking and undocking my laptop at my desk, I wanted to see if Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock would make the whole process easier. Let’s find out how it fared.
Design-wise, the Express Dock is made to blend in perfectly with Apple’s line of Mac machines. It rocks an aluminum unibody shell with black plastic panels on the sides and back, and just like a good mullet, there’s not a lot going on in the front, but there’s a party in the back — all the ports are situated on the rear of the dock. You’ll find an ethernet port, a FireWire 800 port, three USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt ports (which support daisy-chaining), and separate 3.5mm audio-out and audio-in jacks.
One of the two Thunderbolt ports is used to plug the dock into your Mac, but that’s all it takes to get access to all the other ports. Instead of having to plug all of your peripherals in one after another every time you dock your MacBook at your desk, all you have to do is plug everything into the Express Dock when setting it up, and then just simply plug in the dock into your Thunderbolt port. At that point, you’ll be all set to go. This fact alone I found really convenient as I didn’t have all these cables that I had to keep plugging and unplugging every time I wanted to undock my MacBook. It’s just one single cable and you’re good to go.
While the Express Dock will work for desktop Macs like the iMac and Mac Pro, it’s essentially meant for those with MacBooks, which don’t have a lot of options when it comes to ports, especially MacBook Air users. If you use a MacBook as your main machine and want more port options, the Express Dock is about the only convenient option out there. Simply plug in the dock into your Thunderbolt port and you’ll instantly have eight more ports at your perusal, which is pretty fantastic.
However, there are some caveats. The Express Dock doesn’t come with a Thunderbolt cable in the box, so you’ll want to make sure that you have one on hand in order to connect it to your Mac. Secondly, the Express Dock requires OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to take advantage of all its capabilities. The dock will at least work on older versions of OS X, and I was able to hook up a Thunderbolt display to the dock, but it wouldn’t recognize any of the USB 3.0 drives that I had on hand, nor would the audio ports work. However, once I connected it to a Mountain Lion machine, everything worked flawlessly.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the USB 3.0 ports on the Express Dock are limited to 2.5Gbps, which is almost half the speed of what it’s supposed to be at (4.8Gbps). We’re not exactly sure why this is, but it’s still much faster than USB 2.0, which Macs are still sadly stuck at (unless you have one of the newest models). I also noticed that the dock would get hot after a short while, including both ends of the Thunderbolt cable. Nothing exploded, thankfully, but it was always a bit of a concern after I had it plugged in for an hour or so and had tons of things plugged into it. It never got hot enough that I couldn’t touch it, but I was certainly surprised that it gets a bit warm.
Portability is another thing to consider, especially since the dock is catered towards MacBooks. The Express Dock is lightweight and can easily fit into a backpack to take with you. However, the power adapter that’s required to power the Express Dock makes the device not too portable-friendly. It’s about the same size as a typical laptop power adapter, which isn’t a bad thing, since they’re also made to be portable along with the laptop its charging, but if you were to take both your MacBook and the Express Dock with you on the road, you now have two bulky power adapters to deal with. The dock can certainly be portable, but it’s really up to the user whether or not lugging it along will be worth it.
In the end, Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock is the perfect companion to a MacBook power user. However, you’ll have to think long and hard about whether or not you truly need it, since it costs a whopping $300, so it isn’t just something that you can buy impulsively. There is a cheaper option available for $250, but that’s still a hard pill to swallow. Then again, if you’re like me and constantly find yourself docking and undocking your MacBook, dealing with a tangle of numerous wires at the same time, the Express Dock could be one of the best convenience products that you ever buy. Plus, if you’re rocking a MacBook Air and wish you had more ports at your disposal, the Express Dock is a good choice for that too.
Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock Review is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Apr 30
It’s taken a while – a very long while – but Belkin’s Thunderbolt Express Dock has finally hit shelves, offering Mac users a simple way to hook up a workstation’s-worth of peripherals by stringing a single cable. First announced back in January 2012, and clearly missing its original release date in September of the same year, the $299.99 Thunderbolt Express Dock offers three USB 3.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, and a pass-through Thunderbolt connector of its own, among other things.
That second Thunderbolt (the first hooking the dock up to your Mac or MacBook) means you can attach up to five more Thunderbolt devices to the same machine. As we’ve already seen, Thunderbolt’s hefty throughput – bidirectional 10Gbps, in fact – means you can have RAID arrays, Full HD displays, A/V interfaces, and more, all connected and operating simultaneously.
The dock also includes a single FireWire 800 port, handy if you’ve got legacy devices but a newer Mac which dropped the connection, and both audio-in and audio-out. In total, Belkin says, you can hook up eight devices with a single cable to your Mac.
It’s not exactly cheap for a dock, and we’re a little unimpressed that Belkin doesn’t even include the Thunderbolt cable you’ll need in order to use it. Still, if you want to make your MacBook Pro the hub of a desktop setup, it’s a straightforward way to do that without needing to hook up half a dozen cables every time you get home or into the office.
Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock finally arrives, only seven months late is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Mar 17
V-MODA announces Vamp Verza
Posted in: Today's Chili
I am quite sure that many of us out there already know about V-MODA, the designer of award-winning audio accessories for the masses, and this time around, their creative juices have resulted in the Vamp Verza as well as Metallo case. The former is what we will be concentrating on today actually, where the Vamp Verza has been specially developed to turn your smartphone into something that it was originally not meant to be – a mobile Hi-Fi system. You know that the Vamp Verza oozes with quality, where it is designed in Italy and made in Japan, and will continue from where the original Vamp for iPhone 4/4S left off, considering how it features an integrated 150mW x 2 headphone amplifier, a pair of DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converters) and a 2200mAh battery pack. Not only that, Vamp Verza also boasts of the patent-pending Verzadock which is seamlessly integrated with popular smartphone and tablets.
You will be able to use the Vamp Verza as a standalone Hi-Fi USB Audio amplifier, or assuming you fall under the mobile audiophiles category, you can opt to dock it with the machined Metallo case that was specially built for the Samsung Galaxy S3. Make no mistake about it, there will be cases developed in the future for the Samsung Galaxy S4, Note 2 and iPhone 5, and these are set to roll out in the coming months. The Metallo case will slide and lock onto Verza’s high-performance audio engine thanks to the Verzadock rail mechanism which was designed for optimal precision and tactility. Of course, there is also the flexibility of using the case independently thanks to the included back cover, as this comes in handy whenever portability trumps function at a particular moment.
The Vamp Verza’s dedicated DACs are capable of extracting pure digital output from your computer, Android, or iOS device thanks to the USB/micro-USB, converting it into analog form for the purest mobile audio listening experience. In addition, the 2200 mAh lithium-ion battery also doubles up as a backup power source for just about any USB powered device, and it should be enough to nearly double the majority of smartphone batteries out there. Needless to say, this means the Vamp Verza is not going to come cheap at $598 a pop, where it will be globally available in Matte Black, Shadow (Red and Brushed Black Metal) and White with Orange accents.
Press Release
[ V-MODA announces Vamp Verza copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Dec 12
Mac Users Rejoice: An Actual Shipping Thunderbolt Docking Station Goes On Sale Tomorrow
Posted in: Today's Chili
After a lengthy delay, there will finally be a Thunderbolt expansion dock ready for actual purchase tomorrow, according to MacRumors. The Matrox DS1, first unveiled back in June and then updated in September, will be a real shipping device beginning tomorrow, with a $249 price tag.
The DS1 will provide your Mac with a Gigabit Ethernet port, two additional USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0/2.0 port, dedication audio in and out 3.5mm jacks, and either an HDMI or DVI out, depending on which model you choose. It’s the first time we’ve seen anyone deliver USB 3.0 over a Thunderbolt connection, so that’s interesting in itself. The other elements are stuff you can get via other alternatives, like a Thunderbolt Cinema Display, but those will cost you a lot more than $250.
Speaking to MacRumors, Matrox product manager Charles Amyot said there were a number of engineering challenges involved in getting the DS1 docking station to market, owing to the relative youth of Thunderbolt tech. Macs have boasted Thunderbolt ports since 2011, but they’ve seen precious little uptake in the consumer accessory market, with the exception of external hard drives, where they appear generally on more expensive, SSD-toting models. A bevy of added ports is a much more useful addition to most notebook setups, especially for a home or office docking situation, than simple storage that is available much cheaper in USB 2/3 incarnations, which serve the needs of most.
Big name accessory maker Belkin still also has a Thunderbolt expansion dock in the works, one that offers a second Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining, a FireWire 800 port and three USB 3.0 ports in addition to the other things the DS1 brings to the table (though it lacks dedicated display options). That was originally supposed to launch in Summer 2012 for $299, but it has since been pushed back to Q1 2013.
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