Toshiba Dynadock U Universal USB Connect Docking Station

5 Responses to " Toshiba Dynadock U Universal USB Connect Docking Station "

1. Manix says:

   June 3, 2010 at 9:16 pm

   I am using this docking station to connect my Dell laptop (XP Home) to an Acer 22″ widescreen LCD monitor via a DVI cable. I have also connected my keyboard, mouse, printer, backup drive, and speakers to this device. They are all working well though there are some issues.

   First the pros:
   
   1) I am able to get higher resolutions (up to 1680 by 1050) though for personal preference I have set it to 1440 by 900.
   
   2) I am able to view DVDs in full screen and also video chat using Skype without any problems.
   
   3) For graphics/videos it is using drivers from DisplayLink, which has good support. They seem to be actively working to resolve any lingering issues and you can always download the latest drivers directly from the DisplayLink web site. I upgraded mine to the latest from their site.

   Issues:
   
   1) The installation wasn’t painless. For some reason the audio didn’t work at first and I had to re-install the audio drivers from the CD separately to resolve that issue.
   
   2) I am unable to view videos from hulu.com and YouTube in full-screen mode. I am hoping DisplayLink will fix this in a future update.

   Other thoughts:
   
   DisplayLink website also provides the beta drivers for Windows 7 Beta. I installed that too (on Windows 7 Beta) and it was able to detect my monitor and set higher resolutions. However, the mouse movements, animations, and video are still somewhat slow and choppy on Windows 7 Beta. On XP, I didn’t have any of these issues.
   Rating:
2. M. V. Wood says:

   June 3, 2010 at 9:38 pm

   I was very intrigued by the concept of the Video via USB aspect of this docking station. It’s handled via a technology from a company called DisplayLink (www.diskplaylink.com). I read the reviews on Amazon and other websites that said that the video was passable for office applications and such, but not for games. My main use for the device was for my laptop at home, which I use mainly for office applications, software development, and the occasional video.

   When the device arrived it was well built and looked nice. I like that they provided the optional stand so that it can sit upright or on it’s side. I unboxed the docking station and proceeded to download the newest drivers and such from the Toshiba website (had to go to the DisplayLink site to get the video drivers as I’m using Vista 64-bit). Once everything was installed the docking station did work, but the video performance was just not nearly good enough for my tastes. If I took a window and moved it around the screen there was a noticable lag. If I was just typing you didn’t notice, but moving windows and selecting things with the mouse was quite stuttered.

   I did a speed test with the ethernet cable plugged via the docking station using speedtest.net. The results were as good as the ethernet plugged directly into the laptop.

   I connected the docking station to my speakers and they sounded good, except that there seemed to be some stuttering of the playback from time to time, usually when the system was pegged doing something. When I jacked the speakers into the laptop directly and applied the same load to the machine the stuttering did not occur, which leads me to believe the docking station just couldn’t handle it.

   I went to youtube and played several videos, moving the window from my laptop to the monitor to see the differences. On the laptop it played without hiccup, but on the monitor it often appeared jumpy. The CPU would spike when I was watching the video on the monitor as well, which was the drivers compressing the signal to send across the USB to the monitor. The performance just isn’t there.

   I never got to the point of connecting other USB devices to the unit.
   Rating:
3. Tudor says:

   June 3, 2010 at 11:18 pm

   Overall, I’m very satisfied with this product. Instead of having 6-7 cords I plug and unplug into my laptop every single time I take it with me, there’s just one. That’s incredibly convenient. Also, my laptop has just 3 USB ports, and the dock has 6, so I can keep all my devices plugged in all the time. And when I want to eject the dock, I don’t have to take care of them one by one… there’s a special icon for “undocking” which allows you to eject the whole dock.

   There is one compatibility issue however. So right now on my laptop, I’m dual booting Windows Vista and Windows 7 RC. I use 7 RC almost all the time, because it simply is much better than Vista. The one problem I’ve had with 7 RC though, is that I cannot install the video driver for this dock. (You see, to get the dock to work with your audio, video and network, you have to install a driver for each of them.) I’ve tried several times to install both the driver that came on the disc, and the latest one from the site. And every single time, my computer would crash, and I would not be able to restart 7 RC because some files were corrupt or something. I had to do a system restore every time. Eventually I gave up, and resorted to plugging my VGA cord in my laptop like I did before purchasing the dock. Not that big a deal though. I mean it’s understandable… Windows 7 hasn’t even been released yet, and nobody’s really had a chance to create drivers for it.

   So that’s the one problem that I’ve had with this dock and Windows 7. Not sure if this is the case with Vista, because like I said, I don’t really use it. Let me note, however, that at one point after I installed the driver, I did have a few minutes with the monitor displaying, and everything worked great. I had a monitor, speakers, a mouse, a keyboard, an external hard drive, a TV tuner, a printer, and a network cable all plugged in, and everything worked fine… no lag at all.

   I’d say if you’re looking for a dock, this is probably the best one out there. Has everything an average user could possibly need, and works fantastically. Well, almost…

   EDIT: I have to mention, my monitor’s resolution is 1920×1200 and the dock had no problem displaying this the one time I got it to work. And like I said, even though I had like 7 different things going on over one USB cord, there was absolutely no lag. I feel like I have to mention this because I saw a few reviews which complained about it. So if it’s slow, it’s mostly likely your system, and not the dock.

   UPDATE 3/16/2010: I have now been using this product for almost a year, and I am very happy with it. As I mentioned before, it allows for incredible freedom for laptop users. You can have all the hard drives and TV tuners and peripherals as you would with a desktop, and then something as easy as a single click, you could pick up your laptop and go.
   
   I would like to mention that since I wrote this review, I have moved on to the final release of Windows 7 (Pro), and a new set of drivers have been released, and everything works great (including the video)! There are two minor problems I still see with the dock. First, although the video now works, it can be a little laggy when running full screen videos. It works fine when running YouTube sized videos and doing most other things, so it’s not so bad. The second problem I see is that when you’re undocking it, it can be a bit tricky because you may still have some applications hanging on to some of your peripherals, and you’ll get a message telling you so, but it’s hard to tell which ones. For example even after I close Media Center, it still has some background process running, which prevents me from unplugging my TV tuner. Anyways, the workaround for that is to just turn off your computer and unplug the dock.
   Rating:
4. Christopher Page says:

   June 3, 2010 at 11:55 pm

   I felt compelled to leave my first review ever (despite being a weekly Amazon customer). This dock is AMAZING. I’m testing it with both a Dell Studio XPS 13 and their new Dell Latitude Z. Both are great notebooks, but without a docking station option (OK, the Z has a wireless docking station for the price of a car), that was a potential deal killer for the office.

   Enter the Dynadock U. Installation was flawless and painless:

   1) Downloaded and installed Windows 7 Beta driver from [...],
   
   2) Plugged all devices into Dynalink (24″ 1920×1200 monitor, Bose surround speakers, Ethernet, iPhone USB dock),
   
   3) Plugged Dynalink into laptop.

   The device drivers all loaded successfully, and after a reboot, everything worked. Windows even remembered my external monitor placement and settings. Seriously, it just plain worked. I was amazed.

   My experience so far? It’s the first USB dock that’ll drive my 1920×1200 DVI monitor. Now remember, EVERYTHING is going through a 480Mbs (max) USB port, so I expected hi definition digital video to be terrible. Not so at all! There IS noticable (millisecond) lag when you’re quickly dragging windows around the desktop, or during some desktop animations like minimizing windows, but absolutely NO hinderance to using standard Office/Internet apps. To my surprise I am able to watch DVDs and YouTube videos full screen on my external display, EVEN YouTube HD videos, with NO lag or skipping. I was shocked! I have NOT tried playing a graphics intensive game through it, nor have I tried streaming a 720p or 1080p movie file through it. At 1920×1200 I expect it would certainly choke at that point, but if you’re doing either of those things, just plug your monitor directly into your computer and problem solved. That’s not what the dock is for, especially at that resolution.

   I’ve been streaming audio all day without a skip. On the Bose system, it does sound like I’m getting a little less bass when I hook it up analog, but sounds perfect when I use the digital (optical) audio out. The bass thing may be just me, I haven’t done extensive testing. UPDATE: it uses a different audio control panel, and once I found that and adjusted the equalizer, the bass is where it should be.

   It looks great and the construction is solid, very stable sitting on its base even with numerous cables running out behind it. Undocking is a breeze: just click “Eject Dock” in the Windows Taskbar and 5-10 seconds later (depending on how many devices you have connected) you’re good to go. Reconnect the USB cable and everything fires back up the way it should.

   I’ve read the other reviews here where some folks have experienced some quirky behavior. Not sure how much of that is older drivers, an older operating system, or an older PC. While I have certainly have not exhaustively tested ever possible device or scenario, I’ve tested every use I purchased it for, and it works beautifully.

   Hope that helps! It’s the best universal USB dock I’ve ever tested… You won’t be disappointed!
   Rating:
5. P. Wright says:

   June 4, 2010 at 1:08 am

   As others have said, it looks nice and if it worked, it would be great but it just doesn’t work. My experiences apply to Vista.

   The first problem I encountered was you actually have to be admin to install the software for it. I cannot recall the name of the Windows bug, but simply entering the administrative password as a non-administrative user is not good enough. This meant initial installation took maybe 30-45 minutes rather than the 2-3 minutes it should have.

   After installation, I could not get both my laptop (also a Toshiba) and my external monitor to both function at their highest resolution. After finding no solutions on Toshiba’s website, I called and tried to get technical support. They opened a case and promised I would get a call within 2 business days. After several business days and no response, I called and opened another case and was again promised a 2-day response. They never called back and when I called and gave them the case numbers they assured me someone would call. That never happened.

   So I called back and tried to return it, but they said I was outside the period to return it (by about 2 days) and even though I only held onto it that long because their tech support promised to call back they would not budge.

   So I tried to make use of the 1-year warranty. They said they would not honor it. Other attempts at obtaining support proved fruitless and I finally contacted the BBB and got a response.

   After working around their tech support’s schedule (they work roughly the same hours I do only shorter so I had to bend my schedule to accommodate them) I finally had tech support on the phone. He directed me to DisplayLink’s website and told me to download the latest driver. I pointed out that it said “BETA” – I didn’t want to be a beta version. Their tech insisted and seemed very annoyed that I made a restore point before installing it.

   The upgraded driver actually fixed that problem, but it had somehow disabled the VGA port on the laptop itself. When I explained this to their tech, he tried to tell me my laptop was broken. When I explained that it was working fine before installing this driver he said I never told him that. Actually I had told him that, but so what? He started saying he had to go (he was a whole 15 minutes passed his time to go home). I recovered back to my restore point and my laptop (NOT the DynaDock) was back to normal.

   He said he didn’t know what to do and obviously wanted to go home. He said he would report back to Toshiba’s BBB Support group. After a couple of weeks of patiently waiting some response I replied to the BBB and Toshiba. Suddenly Toshiba’s BBB Support contacted me and claimed they had sent me a return label. (yeah, right). So, they actually sent one and I sent them the unit under the warranty (nearly 5 months after my original purchase).

   They contacted me today and said the DynaDock is fine and “this may be important” the driver their tech had me install was a Windows 7 driver (Beta as I mentioned before), but it did not disable the VGA port. I was told that either my laptop was defective or I had changed some setting to make it not work.

   I asked them to have another tech review the notes and contact me as I had no confidence in the first tech who was expecting a Windows 7 Beta driver work on Vista. The response was that an “Advanced Support Manager” reviewed the notes and they were “all accurate” and Toshiba considered the matter closed.

   So it is accurate in saying he had the customer install a Windows 7 Beta driver on a Vista machine and it didn’t fix things?

   She replied that I could remove the driver.

   I explained to her (again) that I had removed the driver and how it had disabled my laptop’s VGA port and it was only after uninstalling that it started working again.

   She replied by putting the words “it started working again” in my e-mail in bold print and saying “I’m glad your unit is working for you now”. Remember, Toshiba still has my DynaDock at this point.

   At this point I realized I was either dealing with a complete simpleton or I was being trolled and I suspected the latter. I told her so and asked her to admit to one or the other.

   The last I heard from Toshiba’s BBB Support Rep was that I should call their laptop support (which doesn’t deal with DynaDocks).
   Rating: