Docking Stations

[pensterino]

I would like some advice on docking stations, please. I have a two-year-old super-powerful laptop which I connect to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse via a USB docking station. My husband doesn't want or need such a high powered set up and is quite happy with an eight year old i-5 laptop (my old one, in fact). However, it would be good if he could easily link it to the monitor etc when I'm not WFH. But his laptop doesn't have a powered USB port so it's not just a question of pulling the cable out of mine and sticking it into his.

Can anyone suggest a work round for this? I've attached a photo of the ports on his laptop. I can probably do it if I know the right words to use and the right ports to connect.

How is your new laptop connecting to the hub? is it via a single USB "C" cable?

Unplug the HDMI cable from your USB hub and plug it into his laptop port.

Yes, single USB C cable into a port with a little flash sign next to it. DH's is too old for that.

Ideally, I'd prefer not to do that, the currecnt setup is all a bit Heath Robinson on a too small desk anyway; also I think he needs a USB port connected to allow him to use the keyboard and mouse without having to shift and unplug stuff. At the moment my laptop sits in a stand on the floor to theside of the desk with just the USB C cable plugging in to it; what we'd like is for him to put his laptop there too with some sort of splitter/converter thingie which would connect the USB C cable to his HDMI and USB A ports. Or something like that.

As the older computer doesn't support USB "C" and requires separate cables for power, monitor, keyboard and mouse I don't think there's a viable way to use the new dock as you would like.

Based on what you've said I agree with above that there isn't a simple solution to getting the older laptop connected to your hub.

If you added a KVM in between your hub he could then just have a HDMI cable and USB cable available to plug into his laptop when required and the KVM would be used to decide if your hub or his laptop was the monitor and USB outputs.

Something like this

amzn.eu/d/eEA9l4r