14 DAY TRIAL // For those people who often find themselves in need of a quick way to plug a regular HDD or SSD into a PC, Sharkoon has built a new docking station, the latest int a long series that doesn't look like it will be getting any shorter any time soon.
By now, some people can probably associate, quite easily, Sharkoon's name with the idea of docking stations.
After all, the company released so many HDD and SSD docks that there is a veritable plethora of them on sale now, especially if those from other companies are factored in.
The newest that Sharkoon built is called QuickPort Pro LAN Giga and is compatible with drives of 2.5-inches and 3.5-inches, among other things.
By drives, this means both HDDs (hard disk drives) and SSDs (solid state drives), provided they boast the SATA connection.
Indeed, docks are items that take such a 'common' drive and let the data on it be accessed by a personal computer via the USB connectivity, or whatever other means is deemed appropriate, like LAN.
In this case, it is the 2.0 version of the Universal Serial Bus standard that Sharkoon chose, meaning that the top transfer speed is 480 Mbps.
Two such USB 2.0 ports are present, to be more specific, though they are mostly aimed at letting extra storage drives link to it, nto act as primary PC link.
The actual communication with a PC, or more of them, is accomplished via the Gigabit Ethernet interface.
Finally, Sharkoon threw in an eSATA connector, plus a card reader that can work with SD, MMC and MS card formats.
European stores should already have this QuickPort Pro LAN Giga on shelves, priced at 59.90 Euro, 81.92 dollars as it were (based on exchange rates). Whether the US price actually reflects this (if the dock even makes it there) remains to be seen.