We have a client that is a happy owner/user of a Plugable Thunderbolt 3 docking station. His Plugable is set up in his home office. He travels to a customer company’s office regularly (and it is a long drive). He has asked us if it is possible to have a single laptop computer (Dell XPS15) use two different docking stations? He wants to keep the Plugable in his own office and have a Dell D3100 dock at the company office. He wants to be able to plug in his XPS15 laptop easily at both locations. My concern with this plan is the possible conflict of the drivers supplied by Dell vs. those from Plugable.
Please let me know if this plan is feasible. If not, is there anything we can do to simplify things and not experience error messages. Thanks very much for any assistance you can offer.
Your client can use both docking stations without issue, they will not interfere with each other.
The Dell D3100 is a DisplayLink USB graphics based dock (like many of our own docking products). However, the TBT3-UDZ is not a DisplayLink based product so it would not share any drivers in common, nor does the TBT3-UDZ require any additional driver installation (it uses the built-in USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 system drivers, though we do recommend to ensure those are fully up to date from the system manufacturer if applicable).
Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any additional questions, happy to help if able!
Thanks and best wishes,
Joshua Henry
Plugable Technologies
Thanks very much for your prompt response to my question. There is one change I need to make to the original question. The Plugable docking station in use is actually the TBT3-UDV (rather than the TBT3-UDZ, which is what I had in my original question above).
Does this model number difference affect your advice above (in terms of using the TBT3-UDV model)?
You’re most welcome! No problem about the change, TBT3-UDV versus the UDZ can be confusing, they’re both Thunderbolt 3 docks, however the TBT3-UDV is not a USB-C compatible one.
So similarly to the UDZ, the UDV will not require any special drivers or have any conflicts with the Dell dock. It just will require the computer has Thunderbolt 3 support (or Thunderbolt 4).
The XPS 15 line should have Thunderbolt 3 or better so this shouldn’t be a concern. I just wanted to clarify this main difference between these two similar docks if it was not yet known.
I hope this helps, but feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions!
Thanks very much for clarifying the model number differences (and especially for the green light on the second dock (Dell D3100). We will encourage the client to try this out. It would make his life a lot easier if he can just plug the XPS15 when at the customer company’s office.