USB to DVI Adapter 1600x1200

by Harmonic Inversion Technology

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B0017KU3Y0
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,909 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 9, 2008

Product Description

The USB to DVI supports up to six simultaneous displays when using six adapters, including widescreen displays, extending your desktop and your horizons. Adding a quality DVI or VGA high resolution display through your USB port used to be science fiction. It is now science fact with the USB to DVI-I adapter. With on board memory and video processor, it is really an external video card you attach to your computer with a USB cable. It used to be that you could add a display via a USB port, but the refresh rate and video quality was lacking. With this USB to DVI display adapter, complete with VGA adapter, you can add either a DVI or VGA display that behaves just like a monitor connected to a standard video card. It operates at a high resolution of 1600 x 1200.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet!, July 26, 2008

By 

J. Gieske - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: USB to DVI Adapter 1600x1200 (Electronics)

I don't usually evangelize products, but this has to be one of my favorite gadgets in a long time because it is so useful and does what it is supposed to do flawlessly. I can't say that about many of the things I've bought.

I use one of these with my Lenovo Thinkpad T60p notebook and three(!) NEC NX2070 LCD's when docked at work. It is great to have a little more screen real estate for multitasking. Once you go multi-monitor, you won't go back, and this little gem makes it dead simple.

Requirements

You really need a USB 2.0 compatible PC/notebook to drive this at a decent refresh rate. I usually use mine for text entry and web surfing, but I've played videos on it without any problems (it does require 10-20% more CPU to render to the display connected to this adapter than your primary display). With that said, I wouldn't try to play video games on it, but other than that, people can't tell which of my monitors is being driven by this adapter.

You need at least Windows XP to use this product.

Support

You configure the product using the standard Windows monitor configuration dialog (e.g. Display -> Settings), so no goofy software to worry about. Most of these types of devices are using a chip set from DisplayLink. Do a web search and go read their FAQs for more info. They have been pretty good about updating their drivers, and now have an auto-update feature to keep your driver up to date.

FAQ

* You will need one adapter per extra monitor you want to drive. I hear you can do up to six, provided you have enough USB ports.

* Look out for other similar products that can only do 1280x1024 - they are usually cheaper and are probably adequate for smaller screens, but you will regret it when you upgrade to a bigger screen with more resolution.

* There are some useful shareware utilities out there for use with multiple monitors: i.e. wallpaper spanning all monitors, task bars per monitor, "move this window to other monitor" buttons. Ultramon is a good example.

The only negatives I can think of really aren't the fault of this product:

1) It takes a little time getting used to the wide screen area and it is easy to loose track of where the mouse pointer went. Just turn on pointer tails or sonar in your mouse options.

2) Some software misbehaves, depending on how you arrange your monitors. I have only encountered three apps out of about a hundred I use that have problems. But the good news is that there is a workaround. For best compatibility, try arranging your monitors from left to right:

1(primary), 2, 3

This will cause pixels 1-1600 to be on monitor #1, 1601-3200 to be on monitor #2, and 3201-4800 to be on monitor #3.

Older software usually never imagined you would have a window with negative coordinates. It thinks the window is off screen someplace out of view. But Windows lets you arrange your monitors in whatever order you want. So if you use: "2, 1(primary), 3" older apps may either crash or lock-up when moved to monitor #2. Sometimes you will see tooltips and dialog boxes popping up on other monitors too. So either rearrange your monitors, use the software on your primary monitor, or upgrade the software.

3) Docking and undocking my laptop has always been a risky affair. When I undock, it takes a few more seconds to shutdown the external monitor. If you undock a lot for meetings, this might get annoying. My laptop usually locks up (even before I bought this adapter), so I just stay docked.