Dell's USB OTG dual charging dongle for the Dell Venue 8 Pro

I've finally put my Dell Venue 8 to good use. It has been in the drawer since I got it months ago. After a week of usage, it really didn't fit my use-case. Even with a portable bluetooth keyboard, I found the whole touch experience with Windows 8.1 on an 8" screen painful. I never even use Modern UI, just the traditional Dekstop and using your fingers is hopeless. Desktop operating systems simply do not work with touch on a small screen.

Then out of nowhere, Dell releases a USB-OTG cable that simultaneously supports charging. It is roughly $20 on Dell's website. For those who don't understand the significance, it now means you can charge the Venue 8 at the same time you are using a USB device. Before, you couldn't do that.Thus, the single micro USB port limited it's use as a full time desktop computer.

There has been some D-Y-I type affairs but I wasn't keen on taking that route. This official dongle works pretty good. This should have been provided from the get-go or made available at release of the Venue 8. I paired it up with my Microsoft's All-in-One Multimedia keyboard. The keyboard has a built in trackpad, so now I treat the Venue like a little mini laptop.

I also have a hoot USB 3.0 3-port hub with built in Gigabit. Once you plug it in, you can make up for the lack of networking and multiple USB. It looks like this:

Now, it is a good VPN terminal. I run Cygwin and I use it as SSH client. When I don't use the Dell Venue, it simply stows away nicely.

Cool $4 gadget: internal usb motherboard dongle

Here is something you don't see too often. An internal USB dongle with header pins that connect directly to your motherboard that has spare 4 pin USB headers. Now, what can you do with this? A hidden internal USB boot disk!

This $3.75 gadget is extremely handy for custom low foot print server builds like FreeNAS or ESXi. You install your small foot print OS onto a USB stick and hide it away. In fact, FreeNAS recommends installing onto a flash drive. Instead of having a USB pen drive sticking out the back of you server, you can simply hide it away inside the chassis like this:

Here, I have it in my Fujitsu MX 130 taped to the side of the drive caddy. I can free up the SATA ports for drives and my OS boots from the USB stick. Cool indeed.

Other uses included setting up an internal usb wifi. This is great for those who hackintosh and need to use a specific wifi dongle.

Link: Amazon StarTech USB A to USB Motherboard 4-Pin Header F/F 2.0 Cable