I worked at a university and we gave all of the professors that had laptops docking stations. The advantages are: *You can plug in your mouse and keyboard just like your desktop *You can add a monitor of any size *Your laptop is charging while docked...
That's interesting since Dell ships laptops with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled....LOL, if you wanna know something talk to someone that actually knows what they're talking about.
You could always purchase the Belkin Notebook Expansion Dock. It will work with any laptop that there is not a docking solution for.