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Comment by Felger | Hacker News Reader

Here, we still use 2015' Dell laptops with PR02X and PR03X old fashioned docks. And some HP zbook with Ultraslim docking station 2013 , with few displayport issues on the first firmware releases.

Next laptop generation will sadly be the end of all those proprietary yet reliable docks and the beginning of USB-C/TB3 wd15/wd19/tb16 era and its army of bugs, failures (WD15 someone ?) and painful and hazardeous firmware upgrades.

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Ouch, that's gotta hurt. One of the things I loved about those old-fashioned docks were how cheap they were, especially secondhand: I ended up buying 3 docks for my T460s, one for work and two for home (one in the office, one at the media center). Cost me less than $50 for the lot of them, and now I can plop down my laptop anywhere I please and it automagically assumes the form of my setup. Hopefully they make a comeback...

Yes I can also find tons of second hand PR02/03X 5 minutes from home here, dirty cheap. But the 19v 130w PSUs are usually more expensive and difficult to find.

But the PR and ultraslim dock series are so far very reliable, even after years of use.

I dread the future massive switch to USB-C and TB3 entry dock.

I hope a chip maker will eventually release a all-in-one TB controller with USB3.x/Display outputs/GbE Ethernet/Sound embedded. Currently, everything is split into differents ICs, hence the high cost and complexity.

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