Due to some level of elightenment at work (well ok it's because we've run out of space given current limitations) I'm looking to need to set up a home office once I escape my Garret (hopefully mid to late november) and join the flip flop work from home rota (Everyone on desks facing one way for 5 days at home, and then swap)
The HP laptop I was given just before all hell broke loose only has a single HDMI port a handful of USB ports and an ethernet port; and a dire main monitor (14" I think and operated in 150% scaling mode for readability) so to get a dual monitor set up since the argument about getting proper matching set ups for home and work is likely to fail... And I suspect it'll be insisted the full set up remains at work*; I'm thinking of either taking the docking station home (I'll inevitably "accidentally" forget it) for each block but it'll be a pain to constantly lift the power supply across (The wall at my normal desk is to my left, I have my notepads to the left of the keyboard and main monitor so the laptop goes to the right of the desk).
So with that in mind, I'm thinking of getting a second monitor for my home desktop and then the thinking is if I get a dual monitor KVMS that gives me flexibility for not just the work lap top without wanting 4 monitors and an massy GBFO desk, I could do 2 monitors, 1 mouse, 1 key board, front speaker output and the 2 computers on that then have my printer, scanner and rst of 5.1 sound in my normal pc, then it's just the case of plugging the laptop into the KVM.
Q1) Are modern 2x Display Port KVMs any good? If so recommendations?
So that's possibly the kit minimization sorted but plugging it into the laptop?
I could do the take the docking station home thing, but that's a faff.
I've spotted that there are a range of USB 2 and USB 3 based Universal docking stations available that can do things like dual display port at a suitable resolution and all the other actions I need.
The closest experience I had to them was the crap USB-DVI ports that were bought for us when we went multi-monitor despite the machines we had at the time had dual Display Port output on them.
and as I remember it they were flakey and I just bought a 2 quid Display Port to DVI convertor.
Q2) Has anyone used one of these USB docking stations and are they any good?
* The fact that NHSSNSS have apparently bought a massive pile of work from home kit for this very purpose going forwards tends to get lost like everything else procured nationally for Tayside IT but anyway...