Fuel for Thought

Product Review—Motorola Lapdock

Most of the things I review are things that have worked out to make life easier for me. The Motorola Lapdock is not one of those things. The basic concept is that the lapdock is a bare bones netbook computer without a computer processor. The smartphone plugs into the dock and serves as the processor. What the lapdock gives the user is a larger screen, keyboard, mouse and extra battery and storage. The lapdock comes up short with its over taxing the phone and awkward connection. The lapdock tends to be laggy. I think it is asking too much of the phone and the pairing just can’t keep up. Connecting the cable is a mild inconvenience and disconnecting the phone is fatal. I can’t just turn off the dock and unplug. That fried one of my thumb drives. I have to use the software storage disconnect before turning off the dock and even then some of the apps that were running while docked have to be reset before they worked on the disconnected phone. It’s supposed to be an on-the-go device, and it doesn’t work on-the-go.

Now I’m looking at a Windows 8 tablet for a replacement. If the Windows tablet works well enough, I might retire the laptop too.

eb