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Andy has been using his notebook as his main computer for a few months now, and his experience has highlighted one aspect that's definitely worth investing in - multiple power supplies. On a few occasions Andy has arrived at the office in the morning, set up his notebook and realised that he'd left the power supply at home. Therefore it makes sense to buy multiple power supplies - three in fact. Why three? Because with three power supplies, you can leave one always plugged in at the office, have another always plugged in at home, and leave the third in your notebook bag, so that you never find yourself caught short when out and about. This may appear to be a hefty initial investment, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

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Multiple power supplies will save you the frustration of getting to work and realising that you've left the PSU at home.

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Another infinitely useful addition to your notebook based desktop, is some form of docking station. The problem is that many modern notebooks don't have docking connectors, with most manufacturers only offering docking options on their corporate focussed models. On top of that, is the fact that most docking stations are very expensive, and can only be used with a specific brand, or sometimes even a specific model, thus limiting future upgrades. The advantage of using a docking station is clear though - you simply slap your notebook down and it will instantly be hooked up to your keyboard, mouse, external monitor, network and power, not to mention any USB peripherals - the alternative being that you will have to manually plug and unplug everything every morning and evening.

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Toshiba's DynaDock is an abitious universal dock, with a plethora of features. It can be a little flaky at times though.

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Although not all notebooks have a docking port, all of them do have at least one (yes I'm talking to you MacBook Air) USB port, and since USB 2.0 is a relatively high speed bus, it can also be used for docking duties. There are docking stations around, like the Toshiba DynaDock, which will pass through all your USB, graphics, sound and networking needs via a single USB connection. Unfortunately the DynaDock can be a little unpredictable, and won't necessarily work flawlessly with every notebook, but as a proof of concept, it's an attractive device.

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Belkin's High-Speed Docking Station is a similar device, which uses an ExpressCard connection rather than USB.

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Belkin offers a similar device that connects via an ExpressCard slot. This makes perfect sense, since the ExpressCard slot is basically an extension of the PCI-Express bus, and therefore is built to handle video and I/O. Of course you'll need a notebook with an ExpressCard slot, but most modern laptops come suitably equipped these days.

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