How to correctly undock T43p?

[lukee]

Can anyone help me, how to securely and correctly undock T43p? Before T43p I have had DELL laptop (also with docking station) before T43p and there was item in start menu to "Undock computer". But T43p missing this item in Start menu. What is correct procedure to undock it? May I undock it when laptop operating or need I suspend/shutdown it every time before undocking? Thanks for reply.

[dr_st]

Having owned a T42 and a couple of T60s, I'm used to always just press the button on the dock, and undock, without any preliminary software actions. Very rarely do I encounter any issues. When I actually tried to use the "undock computer" software command (Fn+F9), I would also encounter issues, so why bother?

[schen]

At the risk of turning this into a personal rant, I just have to say that regardless of brand, I've never come across a "dock" that connected and disconnected as advertised. And that in the end, I've always found that it was simpler to just shut the machine down vs. "hot-dock" or "warm-dock".

That being said; there are some other parameters at play. First of all, it's dependent on whether you have an actual dock (eg. Dock II, Advanced Dock) or an actual Port Replicator, there's a difference although even Lenovo has fallen into the trap of calling them all docks. Port Replicators by definition only supply a "Replication" of the ports that are on the computer itself (maybe with a USB hub added), no more, no less. Therefore, all it really needs to do is to stop the device the same way that you would to unplug one from the utility in the systray. So the "undocking" process on a port replicator should be very simple; just an automated process of stopping all the drivers to the devices that it detects to be connected at that time.

True "Docks" are another animal altogether. By design, they are suppose to allow the notebook computer to have capabilities that are not built-in. A good example is my Dock II which as a Half-length PCI slot, and a UltraBay 2000, along with 2 more PCMCIA slots. Therefore, these devices require that extra controllers and drivers be installed into the operating system of the machine than was previously there. Obviously they are very sophisticated and complex, especially when you involve something like a video card in the PCI expansion slot.

As you can see, it's not all that simple to dock and undock with various drivers and devices involved. Besides the ones that I've had over the years going back to the original Dock II that I used with my 701c (which had an extra IDE and SCSI controllers), our school issues the "Mini-Dock" that we use with our ThinkPad R60s. And my experience has been that users regularly get themselves into trouble and the machine starts behaving oddly after they try to hot-dock or warm-dock.

So, you have the option to take your chances with that or take a couple more minutes and "cold-dock".