Hillbilly-ish Docking Station

[sedrosken]

So for the past couple days I've plugged my SE198WFP monitor into the VGA port on my laptop, and because my wireless keyboard is "Unifying" (I can't believe it actually works...) I have it synced to the receiver that's plugged into my laptop as well. Then I close my laptop and shove it behind the monitor (which I have set to use only it while it's plugged in) so I have some room with which I can do my homework. I figured this was a more efficient use of my space as I'm rarely running two computers at once (this monitor is the one I've been using for my Sempron, which, despite the panel's max res of 1440x900, can somehow push it to (a heavily stretched) 1280x1024 as it doesn't see it as a widescreen for some reason) and I can hardly just move the monitors and keyboards for more space. Well, I can move the keyboards, but moving the monitors would be time consuming and impractical.

I have one (okay, two) questions. One, why don't they make docking stations for consumer laptops anymore? Do they still make them for business ones? I know they had to have a few years back for the (now older) Latitudes, as one of the IT dept. at my middle school had one hooked up to her work laptop while she was in the office. What benefit does a docking station even have anymore? It isn't how they used to be with adding actual features that were missing from the laptop itself (I think you could even add a discrete graphics card, as long as it was PCI), so what do they bring to the table now? Literally I plug the VGA cable in, flip the on switch on my keyboard, close the laptop and shove it behind the monitor. This way seems a lot more convenient.

 

[CougTek]

One, why don't they make docking stations for consumer laptops anymore?

Microsoft sells a docking station for its Surface Pro 3, which is more a consumer tablet/laptop than a business one.

Do they still make them for business ones?

Of course they do. HP has a slim docking station for its newer Elitebook 8x0 G1 laptops (which are flimsy compared to the older 8570p BTW). I'd have to check if Lenovo and Toshiba still sell docking stations for their business laptops, but I would be very surprised if they did not. Dell too.

What benefit does a docking station even have anymore?

Moar ports! Also, you can set up your work space the way you like and hook your bigger monitor(s), better input devices and speakers to the docking station and when you're at the office, you don't have to suffer from the same compromises you have to deal with on the road.

 

[ddrueding]

I have proper docking stations for all my Lenovo Thinkpads. But despite having DP ports, it won't support 4k.

The main reason I like having proper docking stations over the USB thingies is not having to change the default audio device.

 

[sedrosken]

Hmm. Good point.

So I re-plugged the monitor in, and for some reason it's not seeing it as the SE198WFP that it is, rather as a regular plug and play monitor.

Not only can it display at 1280x1024, it can also sync to a (stretched) 1920x1080. I tried to put it at 1920x1200 to even out the aspect ratio, but it wouldn't do that high, at least not on VGA. I don't have a DVI-to-HDMI converter on hand, but if I did I would most certainly test this further. Right now I have it at 1680x1050, and while things are a little small it doesn't look like it's calling on missing pixels. If I have the monitor a little closer than usual I can see it just fine. Even at 1080p, while it was stretched it still didn't look like it was calling for missing pixels. I may or may not be overdriving this monitor right now, and at the current time I could really care less. I thought it was only the multisync CRTs that could go to higher-than-rated resolutions?

1080p? Over VGA? I didn't think that was possible, but okay! I'm not gonna complain.

 

[ddrueding]

When I owned the game center I had 25 Sony GDM-FW900 24" CRTs. 1920x1200 was easy, 2048xsomething was possible over VGA.

 

[sedrosken]

Well, I wanted to get a DVI-to-HDMI converter anyway. I figure, if it works at 1920x1200 over DVI/HDMI, great. If not, I'll be happy with 1680x1050. I figure 1920x1200 would be almost ridiculously small on here anyway, I'd probably have to turn the DPI up to see anything. 1680x1050 seems to be the "just right" for this display right now. And if it sees it for what it is, I'll probably have to force it to see it as a plug and play monitor to get it to sync to this res again.

 

[sedrosken]

I think I have figured out how to put the connector in just right for it to see it as a "Generic Non-Plug and Play Monitor." Sorry, the first time I saw it I misread it - it actually says Non-Plug and Play. I stick it in with the left side subtly forward, and then when I see the higher res I shove the connector the rest of the way in. Any other way will see it conform to its "max" res, and sometimes the way I force it doesn't work. It's really hit or miss, but the way I figured out nails it more often than not.

 

[ddrueding]

Generally, you can go into the "Advanced" menu and then choose "List All Modes". That should give you all the options, including ones that will completely fail to display on your screen (so be careful).

 

[Bozo]

The only difference between DVI and HDMI is HDMI carries sound too. The video is the same.

 

[sedrosken]

Generally, you can go into the "Advanced" menu and then choose "List All Modes". That should give you all the options, including ones that will completely fail to display on your screen (so be careful).

(Insert evil laughter) Interesting....

Good tip. Thanks!

 

[sedrosken]

Well, not exactly. If it's not listed in the list of supported resolutions (ie. the ones you can select normally anyway) it won't show up. Wonder if I can trick my laptop into pushing 1600x900 through its built in screen... probably not.

 

[ddrueding]

Plan B would depend on your display driver. nVidia, Intel, and (I think) AMD allow you to get in and actually specify a resolution (type in the number of pixels and the refresh rate). Intel makes this really easy.

 

[sedrosken]

I've tried to go this route, but the "CustomModeApp.exe" hiding in my system32 folder (part of my Intel HD driver suite, unaccessable by its control panel but still there if you want to use it) refuses to run. Like, I don't even get a sort of notification that it crashed or anything. It just doesn't run. Apparently this is a common problem for 8.1 users. Here's hoping they fix that with a new release, but for now every time I try to load up the page for the latest drivers for mine it 404's. I -really- want to see if I can push 1080p through my integrated display, or even 1600x900. 1366x768 is just too small for me, especially now that I've experienced the glory that is 1920x1080.

Here's my desktop now, kind of related as it's at 1080p now.

 

[timwhit]

Is the display an LCD?

 

[sedrosken]

Yes.

 

[timwhit]

If it's the Toshiba Satellite, then you're going to be maxed at 1366x768. You can't arbitrarily increase the resolution of an LCD, it's set by the number of pixels on the panel. CRTs don't work the same way.

 

[sedrosken]

Well, that's not certain. My current display (as stated, a Dell SE198WFP from '07), which is an LCD and whose max res is 1440x900, is currently displaying at 1920x1080 with no issues. But you're probably right, Toshiba probably used the cheapest panels they could get their hands on. Still, couldn't hurt to try. Worst case scenario I set it to something it doesn't like and I get a black screen for a few seconds until it resets itself.

 

[Mercutio]

That's... not how it works.

The number of pixels is fixed. Period. You get however many pixels the display natively supports. When you put a flat panel display in an unsupported mode, one of two things happens: Either the screen will simply display that correct number of pixels and simply not use the other pixels on the screen, resulting in black bars or even a black rectangle around the image, or the image will be scaled to the number of pixels present. Unless the number of pixels is a clean multiple of the native resolution (800x600 on a 1600x1200 panel for example), this normally looks like utter shit to anyone savvy enough to know what should be displayed in the first place.

 

[sedrosken]

Apparently it is possible to scale a higher res down to a lower res display -- but only on Linux, using some kind of XRandr script. I don't think I can adequately tell you just how much bullcrap I think this is - Windows is a much more... populated platform than Linux, so these sorts of little hacks should be figured out for Windows first, wouldn't you think? At this point, I'm stuck on Windows. OneDrive integration is very convenient, though I can use Dropbox instead, but LibreOffice is no MS Office replacement in my book. I could use a VM for that though, or maybe WINE will run it adequately... No. I'm heading into dangerous territory, and I am not going through the reformat-reinstall dance again.

I know XRandr is a Linux application that depends on the existence of an X-Server to operate, but Windows should at least have some sort of similar utility that defines a higher resolution and scales it to the actual hardware. This is what I was really looking for the whole time - not something that forces my display to something it can't render, but something that simulates having a higher res. To accomplish this in Windows I would normally just scale the DPI down past 96 with the LogPixels key in the registry, but this no longer works in 8+. It resets itself to 96.

 

[sedrosken]

Again, I'm not too concerned about having my stuff look good. I just want the larger workspace afforded by such a resolution. I can get a similar effect in things that support zooming by, well, zooming, but then the titlebars and taskbar seem far too large.

So what I'm going to do (and the inner lazy slob in me is groaning in distress at this) is I'm going to install Ubuntu. I did some more research and apparently the only DEs that do GPU compositing are Unity, GNOME 3, KDE, and Cinnamon. Out of all of these, Cinnamon is what I really prefer, but Cinnamon only comes by default on Linux Mint. I don't like Mint. With base Ubuntu, you have to add the repository and then install it from there. And I prefer the integration quality of a DE that came preinstalled, so... Unity it is, I guess. KDE is a no-go because it'd have to load both Qt and GTK+ libraries and, while I have my RAM to use it, I prefer leaving as much as possible free for user-level applications.

From there I will install Virtualbox (and my copy of 8.1 in it, along with my Office 2013). Then, while I am at school, I will simply leave my Windows VM running so I can use Office. I could give LibreOffice another try, saving in docx instead of doc. Maybe that will fix the weird formatting issue. I could also obtain a copy of Office 2010 and run it in WINE. I figure the morals involved are placated as 2013 is the newer, more expensive version of Office 2010, and I have a license for 2013. I figure that as long as I don't use my license for 2013 in conjunction with 2010 on Ubuntu, I shouldn't have any moral conundrums about cracking that version of Office. Of course, the best solution would be to have something that runs natively actually work for my needs, so I'll probably try LibreOffice and sending it in docx instead. Only if that falls flat will I start worrying about running Office, and I'd much rather use WINE than keep a VM running all the time.

That said, I will probably install it on some kind of test machine to test the newrez script first, because if I install it all and it doesn't work, I will juat have wasted my time.

I wasn't kidding when I said that I wanted a larger workspace - - 1366x768 just doesn't cut it for me anymore, especially since I've experienced 1080p.

 

[timwhit]

I think you'd be much better off acquiring a 1080p monitor than trying to jam extra content into 1366x768.

 

[sedrosken]

I agree, but this is a stop-gap solution. I'd much rather get a fully 1080p-capable display, but Dad won't give his up (though he rarely if ever uses it, and he always runs it at a lower resolution than it's capable of) and I don't have the money. I figure this will do the job until such time as I can afford such an upgrade. I was saving my money for a RAM upgrade and/or an SSD, but now I'm thinking a good monitor is going to be a bigger priority for me. At my current rate of accumulation, and taking any Christmas money into account, I should be able to make the purchase by next March or April at the latest. I hope my eyes can hold out!

 

[sedrosken]

Holy crap guys, it worked! Well, okay, there was a minor hiccup... the script was designed with the fact in mind that the integrated display would be connected to a bus called LVDS1. It's not. It's actually connected to a bus called eDP1. A quick search-and-replace had me up and running. The script supports being run from the command line, with the new res being defined by the command line as well (eg. "./newrez 1920x1080" as opposed to "./newrez" and then manually entering the res in the box that pops up as a result). Now all I have to do is figure out how to run it at startup under vanilla Ubuntu. And the pixel density, while not perfect, is more than adequate. I can read it with my glasses off, though having them on certainly helps. There is a bit of a graphical stutter and the res change isn't necessarily pretty, but once it's switched over it looks just fine. I should probably do a reboot to see if it retains my settings.

Then my next objective is to figure out my office suite situation. Will LibreOffice actually buck up and serve my needs? Will I have to install and configure (shudders at "configure") WINE, and Office 2010 on top of it?

I'm not too bothered by most of my games being unplayable, actually. I was starting to lose steam in them. The one game that I actually want to play will be receiving a native port soon, from what I can tell.

There is a downside - I can't plug anything into the VGA port, lest my display dimensions redefine themselves. But I can live with that - and that goes double if I can still use my HDMI port.

A refreshing tidbit about Unity is that you can resize desktop elements, down past 100%. This is without changing resolutions, and I was playing around with it a bit until I realized that it did nothing for making the rest of the programs conform to my size settings.

 

[Mercutio]

You could maybe look in to something that gives you virtual desktops. Like Windows 10, anything that runs X, or a program like this.

 

[sedrosken]

Virtual desktops are an interesting concept, I'll admit. I just have no use for them, as of yet. I'd much prefer having a larger amount of workable space on a single display at a single time, but that's just a personal thing.

I figured out how to make the script run at startup, and I don't even notice a transition in resolution when I run it at start up - it just starts at 1920x1080.

 

[Chewy509]

Then my next objective is to figure out my office suite situation. Will LibreOffice actually buck up and serve my needs? Will I have to install and configure (shudders at "configure") WINE, and Office 2010 on top of it?

Glad to hear you got the rest sorted out.

What are the issues you're having with LibreOffice?

 

[sedrosken]

When I save a .doc document and then open it in MS Word on a different machine to print, the last couple lines or so are cut from the document.

 

[Chewy509]

When I save a .doc document and then open it in MS Word on a different machine to print, the last couple lines or so are cut from the document.

Do you get the same when you save as:

• doc? (Word 97)
• docx? (Word 2003)
• odt?
• rtf?
• or export as PDF?

Have you checked the margins and paper sizes, are they what you expect in both applications?

I've been using LibreOffice since it was StarOffice 4.0 and haven't personally seen the issue you're referring to.

 

[sedrosken]

I have checked the margins and such -- they all look just fine, even in a side-by-side comparison.

I don't know if I get the same result by saving in docx or RTF, which is why I'm trying those now. And ODT is not an option to me, as these documents are for sending to my instructors. Apparently the whole file format thing got so bad that it is mandatory for them to be saved in either doc or docx - preferably docx (though I'd rather save in .doc for compatibility reasons, though I guess if I really cared about that I'd always save in RTF). I don't know about exporting to PDF, maybe they'll take it that way, but if they do that's sure to solve my formatting issues.

Also, docx was around in Office 03? I thought they started with that with 07.

 

[Chewy509]

Sorry, was a typo, yes docx was '07.

For simple documents docx is safer, as the document is a XML document in a ZIP file, so there is less to go wrong. Also do you have the MS fonts installed and selecting those as the default font (don't think this is the problem, but you never know).

Hint: to see if docx is the problem, open the docx file in the Archive program in Ubuntu, extract the XML file and open it in gedit (or other text editor). You should be able to see the last paragraph there. If not, you have found a bug in libreoffice...

Also, be all means speak to your teachers about the exact formats for submitting your assigments, as the most compatible format will be PDF, as this is what PDF was designed for! Just confirm first before just submitting it. (At Uni we could either use docx or pdf, people who submitted with pdf had the least issues with submission stuff ups). Also using pdf as the submission format loosens the restrictions on what software you could use to author your work, as you can use pretty much most modern word processors (Pages, Word, Writer), or even Lyx and latex for the brave (and some would say, smart) to author your work...

PDF, can also embed the correct font in the document, something which is very very hard to do with docx, ensuring your pdf will render/print correctly for years to come.

 

[sedrosken]

As a matter of fact, I do have the MS core fonts. I have Times New Roman set as the default font so I don't have to go through and manually select it (all of our papers for everything must be in 12pt Times New Roman, double-spaced). I probably could use ODF, everyone at the school has Office 2010+, which I think introduced ODF support. But then, they probably do grading through their personal computers, so the version they have may vary. I'll talk to them about using PDF.

On a mostly unrelated subject, what is LibreOffice Draw for? From the screenshots, I think it's a Publisher clone, but I can't be sure.

Just looked at a nice long document in docx by extracting the document.xml from the word directory in the docx, and I found nothing wrong. I'm unsurprised. I figured saving in doc was the problem.

 

[Chewy509]

On a mostly unrelated subject, what is LibreOffice Draw for? From the screenshots, I think it's a Publisher clone, but I can't be sure.

Illustrator or Visio are about the closest. It's mainly for generating vector based graphics. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_vector_graphics_editors

The nice thing about Draw is that it can generate EPS correctly/easily, which allows very easy insertion into LaTeX documents. Modern LaTeX2e packages like texlive have full support for vector garphics out of the box. (more about LaTeX is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX ).

Just looked at a nice long document in docx by extracting the document.xml from the word directory in the docx, and I found nothing wrong. I'm unsurprised. I figured saving in doc was the problem.

Not surprised that's the case. Have you tried opening the docx generated in libreoffice in Word? To be honest, it could be a bug in Word. But as I mentioned, PDF is the way to go. And if the teachers are worried about being able to do annotations, Acrobat Reader X and XI both have annotation support. See: http://www.adobe.com/au/products/reader/features.html and http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/site/misc/annotating.pdf

 

[Mercutio]

You might try doing your work and saving from Google Drive instead. When you choose to download a .gdoc, you can choose the output format and .docx is an option.

 

[sedrosken]

Not surprised that's the case. Have you tried opening the docx generated in libreoffice in Word? To be honest, it could be a bug in Word. But as I mentioned, PDF is the way to go. And if the teachers are worried about being able to do annotations, Acrobat Reader X and XI both have annotation support. See: http://www.adobe.com/au/products/reader/features.html and http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/site/misc/annotating.pdf

No, I have not. Yet. Will be doing that ASAP.

Merc, I don't use Google Docs (oh, sorry, Google Drive) because, at least in my experience, the connection drops far too often. It may just be that I have particularly crappy internet service (I mean, it is satellite after all), but on the whole I prefer being able to make and save documents without dependence on an internet connection.

 

[Bozo]

Have you tried Open Office?

 

[Mercutio]

It's pretty much the same thing, Bozo. They're based on the same code, it's just that one managed by people who got pissed when Oracle bought Sun and the other is managed by the people who stayed on (and now work under the banner of the Apache foundation).

 

[sedrosken]

Saving in docx has so far fixed my formatting issues. Thanks for the help!

Switched to Cinnamon from Unity. Unity is bad, and Canonical should feel bad. Cinnamon is not just more stable than Unity, it is also more customizable and lighter on RAM. It still does GPU compositing, and it's still based on the GTK+ toolkit (I think it's GTK 3).

 

[timwhit]

XFCE is my preferred choice of WMs.

 

[sedrosken]

Its WM doesn't do GPU compositing, which I kind of need if I'm going to run the res as high as I am.