Review: Dell’s Wireless Dock D5000 really does free your laptop from cables

Laptop docking stations can offer a perfect mix of productivity and convenience. They transform your portable computer (with its cramped keyboard, smallish display, and limited connectivity options) into a workstation connected to multiple monitors, a full-size keyboard, and oodles of connectivity options.

But the bad thing about notebook docking stations is that you can have a rough time disengaging the laptop from its dock. Connections at both ends—the dock and the laptop—tend to be fragile, and they can become unreliable over time.

Dell has a better idea: A docking station and a wireless network adapter card based on the IEEE 802.11ad standard—more commonly known as WiGig. Plug all your cabled devices—up to two displays, gigabit ethernet, keyboard, mouse, hard drives, and other USB devices—into the dock, and your laptop establishes a wireless connection to the dock. Your notebook doesn’t need any cables (unless it’s running on AC power). And since the combination operates on the 60GHz frequency band, it won’t interfere with your Wi-Fi network operating on the 2.4- and 5GHz bands.

ROBERT CARDINThe D5000 has a single USB 3.0 port on its front pane, along with an 1/8-inch stereo audio jack.

There’s just one significant drawback: Dell is offering the internal adapter card (the $37.50 Dell Wireless 1601 WiGig and 802.11n 2x2 Wi-Fi Half Mini Card) that’s required for pairing the notebook to the docking station as an option with only one laptop: the Latitude 6430u. You can’t buy the adapter card separately from the computer, so you can’t add it to a Latitude 6430u you might already own. And there are no third-party adapters that would enable you to use the D5000 with other notebooks.

That will change in time: A Dell representative told me the company “absolutely” expects to offer its WiGig adapter “with additional products in the coming months.” The spokesperson also said “the D5000 is fully standards-compliant,” which means it will work with future WiGig adapters from other manufacturers. When those will arrive is anyone's guess.

Still interested? Of course you are! Even if you have no intention of buying one, you must be curious to know how a wireless docking station performs. In my tests, it performed remarkably well. The D5000 has two video outputs (one is DisplayPort 1.1—which means there’s no support for multistream transport—and the other is HDMI 1.3), three USB 3.0 ports, one gigabit ethernet, and one 1/8-inch stereo audio jack.

I connected two 24-inch displays, one of which had native resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, and the other had native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. (Another bummer: The dock doesn’t support HDCP, so you won’t be able to watch copy-protected DVDs or Blu-ray discs.) I connected the dock to our corporate network, plugged in a Dell wireless USB transceiver (for a wireless keyboard and mouse) into one of the USB 3.0 ports. I connected a 1TB Seagate Wireless Plus hard drive into the second USB 3.0 port, and left the third vacant. If you don’t have a networked printer, that third USB port could be used for a printer, scanner, or any number of other peripherals.

ROBERT CARDINYou'll find two more USB 3.0 ports, DisplayPort 1.1, HDMI 1.3, and gigabit ethernet on the rear panel.

Dell says the D5000 delivers up to 10 meters of range (with the dock and laptop in the same room), but I found that claim wildly optimistic. I lost connection between the laptop and dock if I separated the two by more than six feet. Still, the fact that you can drive two displays and transfer files between a host PC and a docked hard drive without any wires is an impressive trick. If you’ve used a laptop with a conventional dock for any length of time, you know what a pain it can be to make that physical separation and connection over and over again. With the D5000 and the Latitude 6430u, you just pick up your notebook and walk away. When you come back to your desk, the system automatically reconnects and you can get back to work.

While I noticed very little video lag with the wireless dock, I wouldn’t recommend playing games on the system. Transferring files over the wireless connection was also significantly slower than when we hardwired a USB 3.0 hard drive to the notebook. When writing our single 10GB file to the drive using a hardwired USB 3.0 connection, we saw throughput of 99.2 MBps. When we wrote the same file to the drive via the D5000, the transfer occurred at just 31.5 MBps. Read speeds were even worse: 101.1 MBps hardwired versus just 47.4 MBps wireless. We had a similar experience when transferring our 10GB collection of files and folders: Write speeds went from 76.4 MBps to 41.5 MBps, while read speeds dropped from 93.9 MBps to just 44.2 MBps.

Of course you don’t have to subject yourself to that slow data-transfer speed. If you’re in a hurry, simply hardwire the drive to the laptop and go. I never found this necessary while I was using the combination. In terms of performance, the convenience factor far outweighs the sluggish wireless file-transfer speed.

This implementation of WiGig is awesome. The fact that you can use it today with only one notebook—and you can buy a WiGig adapter only when you buy Dell’s Latitude 6430u—is problematic at best. The Latitude 6430u happens to be a good Ultrabook, but it’s an older model that’s not available with Intel’s latest fourth-generation Core processor (Haswell).

Other manufacturers are expected to jump into the WiGig docking station pond eventually, so we’ll revisit this review as more products hit the market. For now, the D5000 has strictly limited appeal.

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
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Do social media ads really work? We put them to the test!

Social media sites already offer free advertising in the form of tweets and Facebook posts, but these tools can only take your brand so far. The next step involves paying for social media ads, and if you're considering this option, you're probably most concerned with one big question: What will my return actually be? Will spending money on an ad on Twitter or Facebook bring more customers to my business than the same amount spent on Google AdWords?

I put that question to the test by setting up experimental ads across five services: Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon. I wanted to see exactly how these tools benefited my own content-creation and corporate blogging business. Indeed, Null Media is exactly the kind of small business that could benefit from social media ads—in theory.

Google's own ad for AdWords

First, a few words about the baseline for this experiment—Google AdWords—where I had already been running ads for several months. For this test run, I raised my overall budget to $25 a day to make it comparable with the social media sites being evaluated. (See page 2 for how I tested.) I quickly discovered that my budget wasn't being exhausted because my bids were too low. By raising these bids to about $2 per click, in line with other services reviewed here, I received more traffic, but not much.

Over the course of the ad run, at both low and high bids, I received 13,970 impressions and got 65 clicks for a total of $80.74. That's an 0.47 percent clickthrough rate at an average price of $1.24 per click.

The verdict: What may sound like poor performance is actually quite good, and since those ads are delivered to people who are actively searching for terms I'm targeting with my keyword ads, that represents a worthwhile investment.

Over 1 billion served, but what about your customers?

Setting up my ad with Facebook was by far my most complicated experience with these services, although its management system and tracking services are quite powerful. The hassles began right from the beginning. I waited all day for my first ad to be approved, but it was "pending" indefinitely. I canceled it and tried again the next day, and it was abruptly approved within minutes.

My ad on Facebook

Facebook offers both CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads. I settled on a CPC ad, targeting Facebook users who expressed an interest in various business topics, with a bid of $0.15 per click. Twelve hours later, the ad had received no impressions, likely because the bid was far too low. Facebook suggested a higher bid of $0.57, which got things moving, but slowly. A day later, Facebook's reporting tool suggested an even higher bid of $1.41. Again, impressions increased, but not clicks. Another day later, I raised the bid yet again to $2, at which point Facebook suggested a bid between $2.58 and a whopping $7.30 per click.

The final ad results from Facebook.

What was going on here? I'm still baffled. Is Facebook's ad bidding a bait-and-switch system or just bad programming? Regardless of how much you pay, Facebook encourages you to pay even more. Yes, higher bids result in additional clicks because your ad is displayed more often, but shouldn't Facebook's system be smarter about its recommendations?

After four days, the numbers were in, at a mammoth 253,207 impressions and a mere 25 clicks. The total clickthrough rate was an infinitesimal 0.01 percent, at a total expense of $37.70. That works out to an average CPC of $1.51.

The verdict: The numbers aren't terrible, and the heavy exposure, even without many clicks, is worth something. However, the scant number of actual visits makes me wonder if Facebook was the wrong venue for this ad. (My business page did, however, get one extra "Like" during the ad run.)

LinkedIn makes a special pitch for SMBs.

I'm advertising a B2B service, so LinkedIn sounded like a perfect match. Like Facebook, LinkedIn offers both CPM and CPC ads, so I gave a CPM ad a whirl for my first day, bidding the minimum allowed rate of $2 per 1000 impressions, targeting a fairly broad segment of LinkedIn users with job descriptions relevant to my product.

My final LinkedIn ad.

My ad began showing within about 10 minutes, and took off. I hit my $25 limit within an hour. The results for this first day were 13,643 impressions and 6 clicks, for a 0.044 percent clickthrough rate and a whopping $4.17 CPC.

The CPM ad did not feel cost-effective, so I switched to a $2 CPC bid and turned on the "Collect Leads" option, which encourages people who click on your ad to provide contact information.

LinkedIn results.

The final tally: After four days, my ad had 51,192 impressions, 13 clicks, and a low 0.025 percent clickthrough rate. My total spend was $41.50 for a $3.19 average CPC. Take out the first CPM-ad day, and the clickthrough suffers—a net 0.019 percent rate—but the CPC of $2.36 (more than my bid, oddly) is more affordable. I never received any leads from LinkedIn, however.

The verdict: After my ad ended, LinkedIn emailed suggestions on improving my ad's performance.  It said the site's "better performing ads" averaged a 0.02 percent CPC, so my ad actually seems to have been a pretty solid performer for LinkedIn, compared to those by other advertisers.

Next page: Twitter, StumbleUpon, and what you need to know before launching an ad...

Christopher Null is a veteran technology and business journalist. He contributes regularly to PC World and Wired, and is a technology columnist for Executive Travel magazine.
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Do social media ads really work? We put them to the test!

Social media sites already offer free advertising in the form of tweets and Facebook posts, but these tools can only take your brand so far. The next step involves paying for social media ads, and if you're considering this option, you're probably most concerned with one big question: What will my return actually be? Will spending money on an ad on Twitter or Facebook bring more customers to my business than the same amount spent on Google AdWords?

I put that question to the test by setting up experimental ads across five services: Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon. I wanted to see exactly how these tools benefited my own content-creation and corporate blogging business. Indeed, Null Media is exactly the kind of small business that could benefit from social media ads—in theory.

Google's own ad for AdWords

First, a few words about the baseline for this experiment—Google AdWords—where I had already been running ads for several months. For this test run, I raised my overall budget to $25 a day to make it comparable with the social media sites being evaluated. (See page 2 for how I tested.) I quickly discovered that my budget wasn't being exhausted because my bids were too low. By raising these bids to about $2 per click, in line with other services reviewed here, I received more traffic, but not much.

Over the course of the ad run, at both low and high bids, I received 13,970 impressions and got 65 clicks for a total of $80.74. That's an 0.47 percent clickthrough rate at an average price of $1.24 per click.

The verdict: What may sound like poor performance is actually quite good, and since those ads are delivered to people who are actively searching for terms I'm targeting with my keyword ads, that represents a worthwhile investment.

Over 1 billion served, but what about your customers?

Setting up my ad with Facebook was by far my most complicated experience with these services, although its management system and tracking services are quite powerful. The hassles began right from the beginning. I waited all day for my first ad to be approved, but it was "pending" indefinitely. I canceled it and tried again the next day, and it was abruptly approved within minutes.

My ad on Facebook

Facebook offers both CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads. I settled on a CPC ad, targeting Facebook users who expressed an interest in various business topics, with a bid of $0.15 per click. Twelve hours later, the ad had received no impressions, likely because the bid was far too low. Facebook suggested a higher bid of $0.57, which got things moving, but slowly. A day later, Facebook's reporting tool suggested an even higher bid of $1.41. Again, impressions increased, but not clicks. Another day later, I raised the bid yet again to $2, at which point Facebook suggested a bid between $2.58 and a whopping $7.30 per click.

The final ad results from Facebook.

What was going on here? I'm still baffled. Is Facebook's ad bidding a bait-and-switch system or just bad programming? Regardless of how much you pay, Facebook encourages you to pay even more. Yes, higher bids result in additional clicks because your ad is displayed more often, but shouldn't Facebook's system be smarter about its recommendations?

After four days, the numbers were in, at a mammoth 253,207 impressions and a mere 25 clicks. The total clickthrough rate was an infinitesimal 0.01 percent, at a total expense of $37.70. That works out to an average CPC of $1.51.

The verdict: The numbers aren't terrible, and the heavy exposure, even without many clicks, is worth something. However, the scant number of actual visits makes me wonder if Facebook was the wrong venue for this ad. (My business page did, however, get one extra "Like" during the ad run.)

LinkedIn makes a special pitch for SMBs.

I'm advertising a B2B service, so LinkedIn sounded like a perfect match. Like Facebook, LinkedIn offers both CPM and CPC ads, so I gave a CPM ad a whirl for my first day, bidding the minimum allowed rate of $2 per 1000 impressions, targeting a fairly broad segment of LinkedIn users with job descriptions relevant to my product.

My final LinkedIn ad.

My ad began showing within about 10 minutes, and took off. I hit my $25 limit within an hour. The results for this first day were 13,643 impressions and 6 clicks, for a 0.044 percent clickthrough rate and a whopping $4.17 CPC.

The CPM ad did not feel cost-effective, so I switched to a $2 CPC bid and turned on the "Collect Leads" option, which encourages people who click on your ad to provide contact information.

LinkedIn results.

The final tally: After four days, my ad had 51,192 impressions, 13 clicks, and a low 0.025 percent clickthrough rate. My total spend was $41.50 for a $3.19 average CPC. Take out the first CPM-ad day, and the clickthrough suffers—a net 0.019 percent rate—but the CPC of $2.36 (more than my bid, oddly) is more affordable. I never received any leads from LinkedIn, however.

The verdict: After my ad ended, LinkedIn emailed suggestions on improving my ad's performance.  It said the site's "better performing ads" averaged a 0.02 percent CPC, so my ad actually seems to have been a pretty solid performer for LinkedIn, compared to those by other advertisers.

Next page: Twitter, StumbleUpon, and what you need to know before launching an ad...

Christopher Null is a veteran technology and business journalist. He contributes regularly to PC World, Wired, and The Daily, and is a technology columnist for Executive Travel magazine.
More by Christopher Null

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Review: AlbumPlayer really lets the music play

AlbumPlayer is not trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, this audio software focuses its attention solely on music playback, on being jukebox software for music aficionados, and it succeeds. Its tabs let you switch between viewing all of your music, to sorting by artist, genre, composer, moods, and more. You also can create custom collections of your favorite tunes for easier access, though I found it unfortunate that you had to do so in a separate menu, rather than right in AlbumPlayer's main window. AlbumPlayer costs 30 Euros ($39 on 2/26/13) and has a free, playtime-limited demo.

The first time you run AlbumPlayer, it asks you about your input device. AlbumPlayer is designed to work with touch screen controls as well as the more standard mouse and keyboard combination. After you make your choice, the software loads, and you'll see that it includes a few music samples. The developer says he put these samples (which are very small snippets of tunes) in there so you can see how AlbumPlayer will look when content is loaded. To add your own content, you have to point AlbumPlayer in the direction of your music collection. It located and added tunes quickly, but it balked at adding much of the content from my iTunes library before I downloaded and installed a dll that it suggested. (AlbumPlayer says that this step is necessary because of licensing restrictions.)

AlbumPlayer's interface is attractive, and it makes it easy to play back your favorite tunes.

Once your music is added, you can use AlbumPlayer's slick controls to browse your collection. AlbumPlayer will allow you to rip CDs, but not burn them, nor will it sync with any portable devices (although you can copy music to a memory card). This is not an oversight, the developer says: AlbumPlayer is designed solely as a music organization and playback tool. And in that it succeeds: its slick interface lets you search through album covers, almost as if you were using a real jukebox. I tested AlbumPlayer using a mouse and keyboard and was impressed by the experience; I imagine it would be even more impressive using a touch screen.

AlbumPlayer would make an excellent addition to a party, as you could create custom collections of music and allow party guests to do the same. It includes a Party Mode, which allows guests to select songs and create playlists, but uses a password to prevent them from editing your actual music collection or messing with the contents of your PC.

Another cool party trick: if you have an iOS or Android device, you can take advantage of the TunesRemote version of AlbumPlayer. It's a 15 Euro upgrade over the Personal License, though you can purchase them as a package for 39.50 Euros ($52.89 as of 2/10). That's pricey for a music player, but it does give you the cool option of controlling the jukebox software remotely, from your mobile device.

AlbumPlayer lets you create collections of music, akin to playlists, but unfortunately, you have to do so using menus that are less attractive than the app's main interface.

Still, the bottom line is this: even the most basic version of AlbumPlayer is quite expensive at 30 Euros, which is close to $40. The demo is limited to 15 minutes of continuous play. And if you'd like to use it in a commercial setting, such as a restaurant, you'll have to pay 53 Euros for the commercial license. With that price—and its limited feature set—AlbumPlayer isn't for everyone.

Note:The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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Is Microsoft’s Privacy Policy Any Different From Google’s? Not Really

Carpe diem! Microsoft has seized the opportunity presented by Google’s privacy policy changes to tout its online services as alternatives. Ads last week hit the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and USA Today suggesting that people concerned with Google’s policies try Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Internet Explorer browser, Hotmail email and Office 365 for business documents.

“Google is in the process of making some unpopular changes to some of their most popular products,” the ads read. “Those changes, cloaked in language like ‘transparency,’ ‘simplicity’ and ‘consistency,’ are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services.”

Google called Microsoft’s statements about its policies “myths” in a post on its Public Policy blog. (We asked Microsoft to comment for this story, but the company declined to do so.)

Is Microsoft’s policy any different? Here are several ways it’s just like Google:

Microsoft also asks new users to provide personal information, including name, ZIP code and date of birth when they register for a product such as Hotmail . Like a Google profile that’s attached to multiple services, this basic information establishes a Windows Live ID that Microsoft uses across its services.Microsoft uses cookies and other technologies to keep track of your interactions with their products to offer a personalized experience.Microsoft collects information about you and combines it with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies. It uses the information to provide services such as personalized content and advertising.As with Google, you can also opt-out of receiving targeted ads from Microsoft advertising. To be clear, you’ll still see ads: That’s how both companies make money.

But Google offers ways to fine-tune the personalized ads you see. For instance, if you are searching for restaurants in San Francisco and you see ads for Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, but you’re a vegetarian, you can block that advertiser from appearing in future search results. Google also allows you to adjust the information that other sites get from Google to show you ads.

Sometimes Google doesn’t get it right: Based on my browsing activity, I am a 35- to 44-year-old man who is interested in computers and electronics. Well, Google was right on two out of three. But hey, if you are looking to minimize what Google knows about you , this is a good thing.

Curious about who Google thinks you are? Go to Ad Preferences Manager, log into your account and select “Ads on the web” to see categories and demographic data that Google has determined from your acitivity. You can easily edit the information.

If you’re still uncomfortable with the idea of tracking your preferences, Google makes it easier to jump ship using its Takeout tool, a part of what it calls Data Liberation Front, a group of Google engineers dedicated to moving data in and out.

Here’s how: Sign into your Google account. Go to account settings and choose “data liberation.” You’ll see a list of services you use that are included in Takeout, such as Google Docs, Picasa and Circles from Google+ . Select the ones you want, and Takeout will generate a zipped file containing a copy of your data and files that you can download to your computer and save as a backup or import into another service. If you decide to leave Google, you will be asked to confirm each service that you want to end, re-enter your password and then delete. Want to leave Microsoft? Good luck. You’ll have to extract your data one service at a time and cancel each separately.

Nothing is free. Web companies survive on ad revenue. Google and Microsoft are no exceptions. By tracking your searches, the Web pages you visit and your interactions with other products they own, companies can deliver information that you’ll find more relevant – and that generates higher advertising revenue for them. Both companies do it, but Google lets you customize your ad experience and makes it easy to take your data and go.

Article provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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