Although I’m working with technology everyday I’m a big proponent of using the least amount of tech possible, especially when it comes to my personal life. It’s great when a piece of technology fits organically and disappears from sight, causing as little friction as possible. I don’t always succeed in my quest but sometimes I stumble upon pure gems!
Just like with this Thundebolt 3 docking station from a lesser known company Mantiz. There’s not much to say about it. It works and its cost is very reasonable. Almost every modern decent computer comes with a Thunderbolt 3 interface. The box has the connections most users care about: display ports, Ethernet and a couple of USB ports. I’ve put mine with double sided sticky tape underneath my table, having only one wire going out to the laptop:
The final result is clean and non-intrusive. My portable workstation now needs just two cables: power and Thunderbolt 3. All periphery, is then conveniently routed through:
It’s been almost a year since I had moved away from my beloved desktop setup. I appreciate having just one computer for both, work and personal needs, powered by on-demand disposable VMs.
Before I stumbled upon this marvelous piece I had an eGPU setup from the same manufacturer. The eGPU housed Nvidia 1080 Ti graphics card. I never liked that setup. I couldn’t get it to be as quiet as I want, plus I’ve used the graphics card’s potential for a total of maybe 10 hours. Gladly, I could sell the whole setup for more than I originally paid, thanks to recent demand for GPUs.