…And you need to invest in a powered dock if you’re going to use a lot of them. Quick question: how many USB devices are plugged into your machine? The USB port is incredibly useful, and yet due to demands of thinner and thinner devices, the USB ports that come native to a laptop are shrinking in number. The peripherals, however, are not. Another monitor might be too much if you also have your mouse and keyboard plugged in (even Bluetooth devices usually come with dongles), and forget about trying to charge your phone and use a flash drive at the same time. Desktop devices are drowning in USB ports compared to the average laptop today.
The way to get around this seems easy: buy a dock. But it’s not actually that easy! Devices plugged into your computer draw power, even if they’re coming from a USB or cable not explicitly labeled for charging. How much power is up to the device being plugged in, or at least it’s cable. You should always check the amperage for your phone cables before you buy them and plug them into your computer because they can sometimes draw so much power that it totally fries the USB port, for example. Many cords are not designed for computer USB ports now that USB-to-wall converters are so common, an inversion of the utility the wall converters were supposed to provide.
Even if your cord is right, if you’re trying to charge your phone, run a speaker, and use a USB fan off of a single USB port, you’d likely overload it. There generally isn’t a middle ground where everything still runs, just slower or weaker – your phone will draw it’s required 5 amps no matter what, your drawing tablet will also draw it’s required 3, etc. and there is no cheating that system. Hence the need for a powered dock, instead of an unpowered one. The unpowered ones may be tempting on price point alone, but it’s a trap! You will fry your USB port if you try to run a bunch of high-intensity peripherals off of it!
If you’re looking for help picking a dock, or otherwise need help managing your devices, talk to us: https://outlook.office365.com/book/WebsiteBooking@elixistechnology.com/
