Ever since I started using PC in late 1988, using two displays was somewhat unprecedented unless you worked on Wall Street. However, times changed (luckily) and today computer enthusiasts can use up to six displays from a single graphics card, thanks to AMD?s Eyefinity technology. However, Eyefinity isn?t available everywhere, especially not in the world of notebooks.
For those that need more multiple display goodness, and don?t have the graphics horsepower, DisplayLink has the answer in the light of their somewhat revolutionary DL-165 and DL-195 USB chips with utilize the USB standard to bring the image onto the display. Teaming up with Mobile Monitor Technologies, the company announced Monitor2Go, i.e. a 15.4? display hidden in a thin notebook chassis.
The Monitor2Go and Field Monitor2Go are powered through a USB port, meaning you can work with the second display for as long as your notebook has battery. If your notebook lasts for 3-4 hours, this might be a problem, but if you belong to a road warrior category, having a second display should still leave you with hours and hours of productive work on both displays.
Monitor2Go and Field Monitor2Go differ only in presence of keypad on the ?Field? product, carrying additional $10 over the $279 price tag for the Monitor2Go. Still, at $279 and $289, these products should justify investment in them by increasing your productivity. The manufacturer claims that ?Multiple displays have been proven to provide as much as 35% more productivity than computing on a single display,?, but personally and professionally, I have to disagree with that statement. In my personal case, productivity went up by almost two-fold, and the colleagues at Bright HQ noticed productivity increase to the tune of 75% (programmers are ranking this at beyond 100%, due to horizontal nature of the code).
The only real downfall I can see with this product is relatively low resolution for a 15.6? screen – my notebook packs 1366×768 resolution with the identical same screen size. It will be interesting to see how the product can perform in our testing.
