This concept is based on the technologies known to me as of October 2016.
I was thinking about how exactly an average consumer uses a laptop and desktop. I was wondering how the process of switching between both could be seamless.
Home / Office
The most traditional way of doing this is to plug some display cable, USB cables, eSATA cable, LAN cable, speaker cables, charger and you are almost there... until you run out of ports or patience... :(
Well, that's not all. If you use some wireless devices, making sure that they are all connected is yet another check to perform before you are up and running.
This means, if you want to use a laptop as a desktop, you would need lots of ports and also, lots of time to connect all those to get the full potential of your laptop. Because of this tedious process, many of the devices are normally left out and your digital life becomes fragmented.
On the Go
You wanted all the ports and speed you want hence you got that all powerful laptop with nice specifications. But it is consuming lot of power and depleting your battery fast. Not to mention, it is very likely that such a laptop is very bulky and a pain to carry around. You realize that you don't really need all of those features and ports when you are travelling. All you need is a lightweight laptop with basic components running in power saving mode to extend battery life.
That seems like an impossible gap to fill between portability, connectivity and performance.
Well.. That was true, but not anymore.
Solutions
Enter WiGig and Thunderbolt 3 and/or USB 3
If you have a laptop with any or all of these 3 features, you can as well say good bye to all the other ports and set up your home and office to make use of these technologies.
If you are concerned about connecting to old devices not at your home or office, you can always carry a small multi port adapter which has all the standard ports missing in your laptop.
Let us discuss how you can use WiGig, USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3 to achieve the goal of decluttering your desk and seamlessly connecting to many devices.
WiGig
WiGig is in layman's terms a much faster WiFi with a very small range. But the similarities pretty much end there. WiGig runs ant 60GHz (WiFi runs at 2.4 and 5 GHz) and has a bandwidth of upto 7 Gbps. With that much bandwidth, you can run 2 Full HD monitors and connect most if not all of your peripherals. But wait... How exactly are you going to connect all of these?
To solve this problem there are WiGig docking stations available in market. The docking station has all the ports you need (of course based on the model you buy) to connect your displays and other peripherals. So it sits on your desk and all you need to do connect to it is simply bringing your laptop in range. No cables required. The only cable you would probably connect is the charger but even that may not be necessary if you setup an inductive charger below your desk and your laptop also supports it. This means, transition from laptop to desktop mode can happen seamlessly and instantly without the need of any cable connection.
USB 3
If you don't have budget for a WiGig setup, you can achieve similar seamless transition using a Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.0+ dock. The main difference between this approach and WiGig is that you need to connect one cable to the laptop. But that's not really a big disadvantage considering that the cable will also double up as a charger for your laptop.
Note: I am using the term USB 3 to refer to these two specigications.
USB 3.1 Gen 1 is commonly called USB 3.0 and has 5 Gbps bandwidth
USB 3.1 Gen 2 is commonly called USB 3.1 and has 10 Gbps bandwidth
Both are fully compatible with each other and also with older USB versions.
Here one important fact you need to consider is that USB 3 can come with Type C or Type A port and it will still work fine except that Type A port may not be capable of charging your laptop like Type C port does.
Thunderbolt 3
Thunderbolt 3 has a Type C connector and 40 Gbps bandwidth. It gives all the benefits of USB 3.1 Type C connection along with some more features which are not available in in USB 3. Some of these features are DisplayPort, 10 GbE and external PCIe. This means you can connect two 4K displays, run a 10 Gigabit ethernet signal and connect an external Desktop Graphics card to laptop. All of these are nearly impossible with plain USB 3 solution.
Not to mention, if you have USB Type C dock with you, it will still work with the Thunderbolt 3 port. But if you connect a Thunderbolt 3 dock to a non Thunderbolt Type C port, it may work only as USB 3.1 dock or in worst case, may not work at all. Hence it is advisable to make sure that you do have Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop before deciding to buy a the dock. Or else, you can decide whether you need those extra features or settle for plain USB 3 dock.
Conclusions
With these modern connectivity options, all being non-proprietary standards, seamless computing is becoming a reality.
This also the first time that wireless docking is a reality without any compromise with regards to speed, latency or sheer connectivity.
USB 3 can be considered be considered as a budget option who aren't ready for WiGig but want all the features with a single cable.
Thunderbolt 3 rules them all with 40 Gbps bandwidth and has some features which neither WiGig nor USB 3 alone can offer. All of it still with just one cable.
There are more ideas that can take this concept further but I guess those deserve a separate post.
Truly wireless computing is not too far away in the future. Who knows? May be you are already using these technologies while reading this!
I was thinking about how exactly an average consumer uses a laptop and desktop. I was wondering how the process of switching between both could be seamless.
Home / Office
The most traditional way of doing this is to plug some display cable, USB cables, eSATA cable, LAN cable, speaker cables, charger and you are almost there... until you run out of ports or patience... :(
Well, that's not all. If you use some wireless devices, making sure that they are all connected is yet another check to perform before you are up and running.
This means, if you want to use a laptop as a desktop, you would need lots of ports and also, lots of time to connect all those to get the full potential of your laptop. Because of this tedious process, many of the devices are normally left out and your digital life becomes fragmented.
On the Go
You wanted all the ports and speed you want hence you got that all powerful laptop with nice specifications. But it is consuming lot of power and depleting your battery fast. Not to mention, it is very likely that such a laptop is very bulky and a pain to carry around. You realize that you don't really need all of those features and ports when you are travelling. All you need is a lightweight laptop with basic components running in power saving mode to extend battery life.
That seems like an impossible gap to fill between portability, connectivity and performance.
Well.. That was true, but not anymore.
Solutions
Enter WiGig and Thunderbolt 3 and/or USB 3
If you have a laptop with any or all of these 3 features, you can as well say good bye to all the other ports and set up your home and office to make use of these technologies.
If you are concerned about connecting to old devices not at your home or office, you can always carry a small multi port adapter which has all the standard ports missing in your laptop.
Let us discuss how you can use WiGig, USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3 to achieve the goal of decluttering your desk and seamlessly connecting to many devices.
WiGig
WiGig is in layman's terms a much faster WiFi with a very small range. But the similarities pretty much end there. WiGig runs ant 60GHz (WiFi runs at 2.4 and 5 GHz) and has a bandwidth of upto 7 Gbps. With that much bandwidth, you can run 2 Full HD monitors and connect most if not all of your peripherals. But wait... How exactly are you going to connect all of these?
To solve this problem there are WiGig docking stations available in market. The docking station has all the ports you need (of course based on the model you buy) to connect your displays and other peripherals. So it sits on your desk and all you need to do connect to it is simply bringing your laptop in range. No cables required. The only cable you would probably connect is the charger but even that may not be necessary if you setup an inductive charger below your desk and your laptop also supports it. This means, transition from laptop to desktop mode can happen seamlessly and instantly without the need of any cable connection.
USB 3
If you don't have budget for a WiGig setup, you can achieve similar seamless transition using a Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.0+ dock. The main difference between this approach and WiGig is that you need to connect one cable to the laptop. But that's not really a big disadvantage considering that the cable will also double up as a charger for your laptop.
Note: I am using the term USB 3 to refer to these two specigications.
USB 3.1 Gen 1 is commonly called USB 3.0 and has 5 Gbps bandwidth
USB 3.1 Gen 2 is commonly called USB 3.1 and has 10 Gbps bandwidth
Both are fully compatible with each other and also with older USB versions.
Thunderbolt 3
Thunderbolt 3 has a Type C connector and 40 Gbps bandwidth. It gives all the benefits of USB 3.1 Type C connection along with some more features which are not available in in USB 3. Some of these features are DisplayPort, 10 GbE and external PCIe. This means you can connect two 4K displays, run a 10 Gigabit ethernet signal and connect an external Desktop Graphics card to laptop. All of these are nearly impossible with plain USB 3 solution.
Not to mention, if you have USB Type C dock with you, it will still work with the Thunderbolt 3 port. But if you connect a Thunderbolt 3 dock to a non Thunderbolt Type C port, it may work only as USB 3.1 dock or in worst case, may not work at all. Hence it is advisable to make sure that you do have Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop before deciding to buy a the dock. Or else, you can decide whether you need those extra features or settle for plain USB 3 dock.
Conclusions
With these modern connectivity options, all being non-proprietary standards, seamless computing is becoming a reality.
This also the first time that wireless docking is a reality without any compromise with regards to speed, latency or sheer connectivity.
USB 3 can be considered be considered as a budget option who aren't ready for WiGig but want all the features with a single cable.
Thunderbolt 3 rules them all with 40 Gbps bandwidth and has some features which neither WiGig nor USB 3 alone can offer. All of it still with just one cable.
There are more ideas that can take this concept further but I guess those deserve a separate post.
Truly wireless computing is not too far away in the future. Who knows? May be you are already using these technologies while reading this!
