The dock is flushed into the body of the speakers and pops out when the button on the center is pressed. If the player feels too loose in the docking bay, you can use a docking adapter (two of them are provided) to reduce the depth of the docking bay. This was something hard to understand as the manual provided no pictorial descriptions of the same and just plain text.
There is a transparent button on the top left to power the device and '+' and '-' keys on the left to control the volume. There is no sort of visual indicator to tell you the level of the volume. Not a big deal and easily manageable. The one thing that I didn’t like about the volume keys is the way it feels or its tactile property. It’s a little firm for my taste. On the contrary the power button is much easier on your fingers and doesn’t need a very firm push. We would have liked the volume keys to be of similar nature.
Once the player is plugged into the dock, you can only control the volume from the speakers. You can also use the speakers with other mp3 players that use a 3.5mm jack. A provision to plug the same is provided at the back. You can also sync your Sansa player with the computer while the player is sitting in the dock. But for that you need to power down the speakers and use a mini-USB to USB cable (not provided in the package). The player also starts charging once plugged into the dock, even if the speakers are not turned on.
I bought this portable speaker system about a year ago . There isn't a thing about it that I think isn't great and I'm tough to please with this stuff ....fabulous tone and range . Lots of volume , twice what I expected . My only dislike and that's minor, is that the player itself is a bit slow to fire up . Shuts down a bit slow too 10 seconds for start up I'd say about 3 for shut down . The Sandisk mp3 player beats the ipod in a pile of things . ipod does a big promo for stuff sandisk sansa already has , plus the battery is replacable and there's a tunable graphic equalizer and radio that can be recorded from then downloaded to you laptop where you can burn a disk from it . i pod is all big money spent to keep converting the lemings who can't judge what's in front of them . Paul 
