Thread

1. aaronbrethorst · 1791128866 · focus · HN ↗

   The solution I settled on was swapping between my personal and work laptops with a thunderbolt cable that connects to a dock. The dock is connected to my keyboard, trackpad, webcam, and monitor. It’s been working like a champ for the past 3+ years.

   1. jmyeet · 1791129875 · focus · HN ↗

      I was a long time user of CalDigit docks. Over a period of 3 years I think I had 3 fail. It's been a couple of years since I've used one in anger. We're onto TS5/TS5+. I think the last I used was the TS3+. But what I can say is... the technology just isn't there yet, for several reasons:

      1. I liked to use a Bluetooth headset. What I really want is to pair the headset (or microphone or whatever device) with the dock, not the computer. As a result, switching just didn't work. And Bluetooth is finnicky at the best of times. This was a pain point;

      2. The cables have a really high failure rate. I now buy at least 2 of any cable I buy because I expect one to be bad from the start or fail, particularly the cable between the Macbook and the dock. It has to carry power and a full TB load. 3 feet was best. 6 feet at the time was the longest it could go. I expect there have been teething problems with TB4/5 since. I'm actually curious about the Chinese GPMI standard/cable, as an aside;

      3. Thunderbolt itself was generally good because it's well-supported by OSX, including DRMA support. But passthrough for HDMI/DP still felt like it had problems. It should be bulletproof. There's nothing worse than a monitor that might go black occasionally and you don't know why;

      4. Generally speaking, handling this much bandwidth requires a lot of computing power. A dock is basically a 100G+ switch.

      1. sirn · 1791132454 · focus · HN ↗

         > I liked to use a Bluetooth headset. What I really want is to pair the headset (or microphone or whatever device) with the dock, not the computer. As a result, switching just didn't work. And Bluetooth is finnicky at the best of times. This was a pain point;

         You can resolve this one with those dongle that did the pairing on the dongle itself, e.g. Sennheiser BTD-600/700. The device will appear on the host machine as a non-Bluetooth audio device.

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