PCI cards for Dell latitude C series laptop Dock Station

We have number of Dell latitude C series laptop in our office. We also have several docking station for those laptops. There is a space in docking station where we can add PCI card for it enlarge its functionality. Now my question is, is it possible to add a USB 2.0 Card in that dock so that we can gain higher transfer speed in data between the laptop and the flash drives. Is it possible to use a graphic card so that we can connect a compatible wide screen monitors to the docking station. I am looking for a suggestion from anyone. Thank you all for your kind information.

I don’t have any idea about whether the dock is compatible to accept he PCI cards are not. There might be a chance that some PCI cards may be accepted. You should try it by yourself. What will be going to cause if you use PCI cards in it? Is there any component which is causing the use of PCI cards in dock? I don’t think that you get an issue with this. You can freely use any kind of PCI cards if there is a space already given to it.

It seems to me that some of the Dell laptops would not accept the PCI cards from the third party vendors even if it was connected via dock. I heard about some of the series of laptop especially C series which will not accept PCI graphic card to it. I think that there must be some kind of BIOS lock which is not allowing any third party PCI cards. But you can freely use Dell supported Cards without any issue. As far as the external monitor concern the C series laptop will not provide good screen resolution to it. I think you should clone the display in order to get the right output. The OS installed in your laptop will sometime also affect the screen resolution and settings. The C610 does not shore up the wide-screen format or monitors.

Make sure that you already have a latitude BIOS with full dock support in order to use PCI cards in it. As far as the USB 2.0 concern use belkin pcmcia card which will free up all the slots. If you are looking forward to use external monitor to dock you can check the best PCI video cards like GF FX 5700 LE or GF 6100 or 6200 PCI card. For higher data transfer rate you can go for a Netgate card which has an Atheros chipset that that is capable of complete 108mpbs super G.

There are enhanced choices these days with all the new stuff. For that you might want to explore around. Rather than using PCI cards you can use any alternative way to get rid of usage of PCI cards. You can use wifi connection for networking or internet rather than PCI modem or NIC card. For USB 2.0 you can use USB extender which comes along with USB itself. Otherwise you can use converter like Firewire to USB or Serial to USB. As far as the monitor issue concern you don’t need to use graphic card only. You have other better choice rather than that. For monitor you can use USB plug device from HP or Dual monitor Cable either for Serial port or the USB port of the laptop.