Road-warrior productivity boosters for laptops blessed with USB-C but no Ethernet or VGA
Working in hotels with your laptop can be a pain, sometimes literally. I mean really working, and producing content. Here's just some of the issues commonly noticed when traveling for work like I do:
- no secondary display, man do I miss having one
- way-too-high desktop to type comfortably on
- terrible Wi-Fi speeds
- no mouse, and having to leave home row to reach the Trackpad
This article features devices that resolved all 4 issues for me, completely. I've been using them for some months now, in my job, and in my leisure. Carefully TinkerTry'd and tested when actually out-and-about, both alone in hotel rooms, and in front of customers doing presentations. A big productivity boost, without a huge cost in dollars or travel weight, and easily stowed in my laptop bag that can already fit a 15.6" laptop like my Dell Precision 5510. This premium system is very similar to the Dell XPS 15, and pretty much any premium new laptop arrives with at least one USB-C connection these days, with all laptops featuring them soon.
A second display for your laptop, no batteries, just one cable.
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See also the product page
ASUS ZenScreen™ MB16AC is designed to keep you productive, wherever you are. It's the world's first portable monitor with a hybrid-signal solution, which means that it only needs a single USB connector cable to be fully compatible with almost any laptop. With a super-slim 8mm profile, and weighing just 0.78kg, ZenScreen MB16AC is also the world's lightest 15.6-inch companion display monitor.
Video of me unboxing and testing this ZenScreen is coming soon.
Shorter, more flexible Thunderbolt 3 cable.
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Much more supple than the longer cable the monitor comes with. See the Photo Gallery below for how it all fits together.
Keyboard that can use at a comfortable height.
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For a much more comfortable typing position, right on your laptop, sparing you the annoyance of typing up high on those hotel desks. And honestly, not a big fan of Dell's use of Fn key combinations just to use Page Up / Page Down, along with the reversal of Fn and Ctrl keys at the bottom left. I simply rest this keyboard over the original, and TaDa, I have myself the latest generation of the legendary ThinkPad keyboard back. I though I wouldn't like the chicklet spacing, but I was wrong, I actually like it better than the original ThinkPad keyboards with keys all tight against one another.
Of course, as a 21 year IBM veteran who touch typist, I'm rather accustomed to being very productive with the TrackPoint pointing stick red nubbin. And you don't have to trust Bluetooth, it comes with a micro USB connection and cable too. Or you can buy the same keyboard without the Bluetooth for about $12 less.
Here's what Veeam's Anton Gostev had to say about this keyboard in his October 9 2016 issue of the weekly Veeam Community Forums Digest:
As far as peripherals go, I am currently using Bluetooth keyboard and mouse – but being a TrackPoint freak, I will be buying this keyboard to have a single unit that can do it all. There are a bunch of alternatives with TrackPads too, but I am actually so good with TrackPoint that sometimes I feel I am more productive with it than with a regular mouse due to being able to keep both hands on keyboard all the time. Yeah, it takes some practice – but once you "get it" you will be stuck with buying ThinkPads for the rest of your lives like me (because IBM/Lenovo owns the patent for TrackPoint).
Skip that crummy Wi-Fi wherever possible, use Ethernet, and have VGA for old projectors.
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This is a small device, my StarTech.com USB 3.0 3 port hub with gigabit ethernet. Gives me the extra USB 3.0 ports I need for my mouse's bluetooth dongle, and my clicker, for when I'm presenting, and a spare.
I also prefer to avoid messing with DisplayLink drivers entirely, which I found out the hard way that I describe below. A safe-and-simple approach is best with StarTech.com HDMI to VGA adapter. It doesn't need video drivers, instead, it simply adapts your laptop's HDMI output to VGA, for those pesky legacy projectors and monitors still out there.
Get a thin and light Cat6A 14' network cable that can reach anywhere.
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Everybody who sees these 10GbE capable cables in action at one of my user group demos is impressed by how thin they are, why not keep one of them in your travel bag, to stretch to whatever crazy place you locate an RJ45 jack on the hotel wall?
If there's no Ethernet jack, and the Wi-Fi is crummy, I use a USB tethered connection to my Personal Hotspot function of my iPhone, but most iOS and Android phone plans offer such robust LTE connections nowadays.
Get yourself a good mouse, with smooth scrolling.
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Yeah, I'm fond of the original but now aging Logitech M705, as pictured below. Now that I'm used to smooth scrolling my way through the web, I can never use another brand of mouse that only has a ratcheting mouse wheel.
Yeah, I'm fond of the original but now aging Logitech M705, as pictured below. Now that I'm used to smooth scrolling my way through the web, I can never use another brand of mouse that only has a ratcheting mouse wheel.
I wrote quite a bit about convincing it to get along with Windows 10 nicely here. But Logitech seems to have no interest in updating that aging SetPoint 6.67.83 driver from Sep 2015, and lately in Chrome the smooth scrolling and any scrolling periodically stops working. With the very similarly designed new Logitech M720, it all "just works" with Windows 10 Creators Update, including multiple desktop switching, and that amazing smooth scrolling that I demonstrated here. The new 6.50.60 version of Logitech Options supports the M720, and not the M705. Just be sure to uninstall SetPoint if you have it already, along with the Logitech Smooth Scrolling 6.65.62 Chrome extension. Once Logitech Options is installed, turn on the Smooth scrolling option. Yeah, hardware obsolescence due to drivers that no longer get developed drives me a little crazy too. Hopefully I can keep using my M720 for many years
This mouse pad will get your mouse to work on anything, even glass desks.
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and you'll get that single-pixel-at-a-time precision required for those careful image crops. The "Graphite" grey model allows the Logitech M720 mouse to track slightly better than the black model featured in my picture gallery below.
Video
Unboxing and testing recorded in 4K! In this video, you'll see me trying out the onscreen menus on this IPS matt anti-glare LCD panel and using the carrying case/stand. Produced on my 12 core SuperServer Workstation, as seen rendering here.
Photo Gallery
Intended to be run fullscreen. To get started, simply click on any of the photos below, then click "Toggle fullscreen" at top-right, then right arrow your way through, pressing ESC when done.
Aug 07 2017 Update
I've now gone 10GbE, on my laptop. Wow! Thunderbolt 3 allows this to happen, along with a Dell TB16 dock, detailed at:
Yes, the dream of a single cable to charge my laptop, run 3 monitors, and have 10GbE connectivity is very much alive!
The lack of dedicated PgUp/Pg/Dn, Home, and End keys continues to drive me a bit nuts when using the Dell's keyboard, along with the reversed Ctrl and Fn keys that can't be swapped in the BIOS. So I tend use the Lenovo keyboard, problem solved, or at least side-stepped.
This is how I get stuff done, when I'm not at home. I now have a photo of my use of most of this gear in a New York City hotel room, with the usual way too high work surface. Note, the keyboard is actually on my lap, for comfortable typing. The ASUS monitor is slid to the right in its stand, to reduce the distance between the screens.
Oct 15 2017 Update
I've created a separate article with video just about the ASUS ZenScreen MB16AC, see:
Archive
The article originally appeared with the following text, archived here in case the information is useful to others.
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Use that hotel Ethernet whenever you can, tends to be faster than Wi-Fi. Also handy to have a VGA connection, for those podiums and customer projectors that just don't have HDMI. For the
JUA370 / 370BE - USB 3.0 Multi-Adapter VGA & Gigabit Ethernet that I had tried, the current gotcha with Windows 10 Creators Update is that auto-installed driver V17.01.0413.3192 can cause Windows stability issues. Instead, before plugging in, get the backlevel driver v16.09.1121.3179 or v17.02.0516.3179 installed first, at least until J5Create gets a new driver out on the product support page, which is currently an untested and potentially problematic v17.02.0516.3192.
Because of these issues with the JUA370, I'm now experimenting with the use of the Dell Universal Adapter DA100 instead, with similar functionality. While Dell makes a USB-C version, my Dell Precision 5510 has only one of those USB-C ports used for my 2nd monitor, so I'm using the USB 3.0 Dell adapter instead. Another advantage of Dell branding is Dell support, with some driver commonality with their docking solutions that I'm also experimenting with.
Here's the original monitor I used, but have now given to another family member.
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See also at TinkerTry
