As far as I know, there's no sound output on a dock? Or do you mean, when you dock the laptop, you have a monitor connected to it and the sound goes out from there? Also, aren't you a developper/programmer? So I guess you can do other heavier task than playing poker on your laptop, if you do work with it for example. You could buy a new dock and try it out, but if it doesn't work, then you would have wasted money for nothing. I would still give it another 2-3 days without the dock but while using the laptop normally and see how it behaves.