BookEndz Docking Station, whose ports replicate those of the MacBook Pro, keeps you fully connected and portable at the same time.
Life is tough enough. The economy’s gone to crap, Arctic glaciers are floating off the coast of California, and there’s only one more season of Lost left. All this, and we still have to mess with a wild splay of cables every time we want to enlist our MacBook into mobile service?
BookEndz aims to end the hassle of unplugging and replugging your cable connections. If you’re an office drone of the same persuasion as the Mac|Life crew, you already know the drill: Your MacBook sits on your desk, dutifully connected to a power cord, external display, speakers, printer, keyboard, and mouse. You need to take your ’Book into the conference room, so you unplug everything and scoot. The meeting ends, you return to your desk… and spend the next few minutes cursing your bad judgment to major in something self-indulgent--journalism, say--instead of cable management.
The BookEndz dock reduces your relocation chores by about 90 percent. We reviewed a model built for our 15-inch MacBook Pro. Aside from the absence of a MagSafe power port (which Apple doesn’t license to other companies), the BookEndz’s ports directly replicate all those found on the MacBook Pro. So, after plugging all your cables into the docking station, operation is a simple matter of seating your notebook into the BookEndz and then gently pushing the BookEndz’s “wings” into the computer. Voilà! The BookEndz is now one happy pass-through for all your ports and connectors, with your existing MagSafe adapter supplying the juice.
The system works exactly as advertised, but we’re a tad concerned about long-term durability. The BookEndz’s male connectors have a bit of flexibility and give--in particular, the Ethernet plug. This looseness allows the connectors to align with their respective female notebook sockets, even sockets that might be slightly off. But the looseness also strikes a bit of fear in our hearts. In fact, the bundled documentation advises, “WARNING! …You MUST dock and undock the computer 4 or 5 times to align the connectors.” And the documentation makes an even bigger deal about using your hands--not the release handle in reverse--to seat the connectors in their sockets. Add everything up, and we’re thinking this is a device that needs a gentle touch, each and every time--although we’ve been using it daily for several weeks, without any problems.
A notebook docking station is an office nerd necessity, and the BookEndz gets the job done. Just be gentle, and watch where you’re swinging that ball-peen hammer when the BookEndz’s male connectors are exposed. We just don’t think they could survive even the most gentle of thrashings.
Docking Station
COMPANY: BookEndz
CONTACT: www.bookendzdocks.com
PRICE: $159 to $319.95, depending on MacBook model
REQUIREMENTS: Compatible Apple notebook; check BookEndz website to see if your model is supported
You’ll never have to unplug and replug a tangle of messy cables ever again.
I/O connectors seem unfit to withstand extreme jackassery.
