WD22 Dock - Power and peripherals control

 execdir2019,

Click the link here for information about the TB22TB4 Docking Station.

Hi Jesse,

I've been to the page to which you linked, but I still couldn't find a definitive answer. It seems to imply that I can't, but I was hoping someone could tell me for sure.

"I noticed that the power is being fed from the dock to my laptop continuously"

This is expected, no? Power supplies will supply power if the laptop draws it. The laptop will draw power if it is on or charging. How is the WD22TB4 different from any other power supply in this respect? If the laptop is hotter than usual then it is charging or not sleeping.

Perhaps you are saying that you don't want the laptop to run off external power despite the dock being connected? You can configure this if you are so inclined, see Table 7 "Power menu" here:

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-uk/xps-13-9310-laptop/xps-13-9310-service-manual/system-setup-options?guid=guid-685a2d6d-ce82-41e6-865e-e37f2ebc4e9f&lang=en-us

Whenever it's plugged in, it continues to draw power, which is not great for battery life. In my laptop, it's also not good as my laptop continues to heat up to quite high levels when it is charging. I'd like to still have the signal from my peripherals via the dock, but be able to turn off the power draw option as I desire to control the heating issue.  If I was just using my power cord and not the dock, I would unplug it periodically throughout the day to let it draw down the battery charge, and only plug it in when I need to re-charge. I want to be able to emulate the plug-in/unplug behaviour when using the dock, but still have the signals from the peripherals flow through even when the power is not flowing through. I hope that clarifies what I'm asking.

Hi shortshrift99,

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do, but I was hoping to be able to do that "on the fly" with the power button on the dock, not as a permanent setting via the BIOS. From what I'm hearing, it sounds like this may not be an option.

As a follow-up to your post, which specific setting in the Power menu where you thinking of to solve this issue?

"As a follow-up to your post, which specific setting in the Power menu where you thinking of to solve this issue?"

Battery Configuration: Enables the computer to run on battery during power usage hours. Use the below options to prevent AC power usage between certain times of each day.
Default: Adaptive. Battery settings are adaptively optimized based on your typical battery usage pattern.

The text says "prevent AC power usage", so I imagine you can achieve what you want... though you would hope the default Adaptive does something the engineers thought sensible!