[NAME]  Because the E-Port dock and E Series systems were introduced in 2008. Back then the underside dock connector on the laptops was closer to the center, which meant that when you docked the system, the back half of the laptop occupied that space where you have a gap. (The slider on the dock unit that can extend or retract part of the main dock unit exists to account the fact that some laptops had optional high capacity batteries that would protrude out from the rear edge of the chassis.) With the Exx40 models introduced around 2015 (I think) and models after that, the underside connector got moved to the rear edge of the system — not sure why — and that goofy spacer was introduced. I guess Dell chose to maintain compatibility with what was by then a huge installed base of E-Port docking stations in businesses rather than introduce a brand new dock model that would make it harder for businesses to support multiple employee setups, especially in “hot desk” environments where you never know which person and therefore which laptop will be used at the desk. Another possible factor is that USB-C and Thunderbolt docks arrived in 2015, so it probably didn’t make sense to introduce a whole new dock for the Exx40 and above models only to replace them again a few years later.
Hi  I just bought this dock and can't understand why this design so weird , I planned to save space but once locked footprint is the whole thing is like double size of laptop, why they created this, I even see that have special spacer to fill this gap.  PRobably I'm missing some secret functions. Why this connector is so fare away from main brain unit where we have DELL written.? Thansk Mario   [IMAGE]
E Port Replicator PR03X weird design for E7440