:DoNaMon Fan Multi Dock Station (mini review)

Hooray, the summer has started... Mini skirts, bathing suits, sand, palm trees... absolutely great for those of you that are on holiday (and not affected by the traffic jams that seem to be closely affiliated with them). If you're not fortunate enough to go on holidays and your boss forces you to work during office hours (yep, that's sometimes the case), the summer is also a synonym for the heat, and even though you can jump in a cold show after work, your PC can't. This is a mini-review of a docking station that will relieve your PC a bit and reveal new horizons for it thanks to:




The DoNaMon Fan is an aluminium plate and underneath it you can connect a 747 turbine (a fan) that will cool down your laptop, but it will also give you:

- a memory card reader (CF I/II, Micro Drive, MMC, RS-MMC, SD, MiniSD, MS, MS Duo, MS Pro and SM (Smart Media pas Sado Maso))
- a 2.5" HDD bay
- a USB 2.0 HUB (2 ports)
- a 70x70x10mm 2600rpm and 26.0 dBA fan
- Compatibility with all 10 to 17" laptops









One of the interesting aspects of the DoNaMon Fan is the possibility to integrate a 2.5" HDD in its casing, that will be connected to the PC through a USB port. If you're running Windows 2000 or even 98, you'll need a driver, but those are supplied with the docking station.




As you can see, installing an external disk is a piece of cake. Once the HDD is screwed onto the plastic bay, all you need to do is slide it into the slot. It might have been wise to include 2 other black trays to accomodate other disks, but nowadays, it's really not difficult to find 2.5" HDD's with capacities of 80 or 100 Gb.





As for the HDD slot, you'll find all the appropriate drivers for the memory card reader on the supplied CD (if you need it anyway). This card reader is situated on the left, and the only real drawback is that CF cards stick out a bit too far, but it's not a big problem after all.
Once the connection is made, the advantage is immediately clear: despite the fact that more and more PC's come with an integrated card reader, having a second one at your disposal is never a bad thing.





At the back of the DoNoMon Fan you'll find the USB 2.0 hub, next to the USB port that connects the docking station to your PC. As explained before, even if you lose a USB port on your PC, you gain a USB hub. Also at the back, you'll find the On/Off switch of the docking station and the connector for the power supply. The DoNoMon Fan is not powered by your laptop, and that's a good thing, because your laptop battery would not last very long. You also need to know that the power supply is 100-240V, so you can use it anywhere on this globe.



On the front, you'll find 3 LED's: one "Power" LEd that indicates that the station is switched on, one "HD" led that corresponds to activity on the HDD and the last led indicates whether there is activity on the memory card reader ("Flash card").




Difficult to judge, because we were not really able to test the fan and measure the effect on a laptop. All this because of the sub-zero airconned offices and our frsiky cool laptops because of that.

Thanks to GeekStuff4U.comfor allowing to test us this device.