How steep is the docking station angle?

[hughlle]

In my opinion, you get the dock to use your Surface as a desktop. When you make your Surface a desktop you very likely will attach a monitor of size to it. I can't see doing a much business work in the office using the Surface screen. It's great that you can carry your business computer on the road with you are to a meeting. With the Microsoft dock, you just pop the sides open and grab your Surface to take to a meeting or wherever.

I don't see the angle of the Surface as it sits in the dock as much of a detriment. Even the majority of my laptop users prefer to have a monitor connected to their laptop when in the office. I just setup one of my users (a director) with a Surface 3 i5 with two 22' dvi monitors. I set it up so the Surface monitor makes a 3rd display to the right side. I have doubts that it will come in to play much but I gave him the option.

Yes, it is for the ability to use a large screen, as you would a normal desktop, but this is a device with a touch screen and a great, just because I'm using it as a desktop replacement doesn't mean I'd be willing to sacrifice the usability of the pen. I'd love to have documents and source material open on the desktop displays while having one note open on the surface for various thoughts etc as I'm ploughing through the work on the main monitor. No different to having a pen and paper at your desk.

 

[mitchellvii]

Yep, going flat on the fly is a benefit. Dock sort of prevents that. For 2 bills they should have given it a hinge. That's just MS trying to decide what we want for us again.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Well that settles it. Angle is too steep for me. I really like having my eyes perpendicular to the screen for direct viewing. Looking down on a screen from above gives me a headache.

Thanks again Len!

Looks like the Plugable port may be the solution. Too bad. That dock is slick. However, I can spend that $200 and upgrade my i3 to an i5 (not sure I want to do that since i5 owners seem to be having so many issues and this i3 has been flawless so far.) Sometimes good enough is good enough.

I must say that my i5 has also been pretty much flawless too and I have been using it since the day it was released.

 

[GreyFox7]

I had an older Pluggable dock. The only complaint I had was it easily fell over with cables attached. I opted for the Targus this time round... flat vs upright.