Dell Laptop and Docking Station - behaves differently in XP

#1 (**permalink**) 04-12-2007, 04:31 PM

There seems to be some key differences in the way that Vista works with a
docking station (from what I am accustom to in XP). All these articles relate
to a Dell Latitude D505 using a Dell docking station.

1) Dual displays with a docking station.
I use a 19" display with my laptop screen so I have two displays. This works
great, I shut my laptop down and turn it on again and it remembers this
setting. I then shutdown and take the laptop home to do some work. I am now
working without a docking station on the laptops own display, this works
fine. The next day when I come into work and put the laptop onto the docking
station it does not remember the display I had setup. I have to go into the
Personalize area and "extend the desktop onto this monitor". This is a
feature I am used to in XP which no longer seems to occur, is there a way of
making this happen?

2) Physical network connection and wireless connection.
In XP I used to have the wireless connection disabled when I was on the
docking station (and Intel NIC enabled). When I went home the laptop knew I
wasn't on the docking station so it would use my settings which were wireless
enabled and Intel NIC disabled. When I went back into the office it would see
I was docked so reverted to the docked settings. I cannot seem to replicate
this behaviour in Vista. If I take it off the docking station and boot up the
wireless is disabled. So I enable wireless and disable Intel NIC and all
works fine. Until I plug it into the docking station and it leaves the
wireless enabled and Intel NIC disabled. This is a feature I am used to in XP
which no longer seems to occur, is there a way of making this happen?

3) Power Schemes.
I don't seem to fully understand how the power schemes work in Vista. In XP
if I unplugged the power adapter it would do things like reduce the
performance of the laptop, screen brightness etc and give me longer battery
life. In Vista it appears that I need to click on the power icon and change
the power plan manually. Is there a way to automate this? It seems to be
counter productive and I later forget that I plugged back into power and
didn't change it back to High Performance.

Thanks

Troy

#2 (**permalink**) 04-12-2007, 04:58 PM