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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

MaxiVista Turns Your Laptop Screen Into a Desktop Extension

MaxiVista has an interesting product that allows you to use your laptop screen as a desktop extension. I may be alone in dreaming of massive wall of video screens, but this is an interesting solution. How it Works:

"MaxiVista enables you to use a second computer as an extended display of any other computer without the need of any additional hardware.MaxiVista installs a virtual video card onto your primary PC which fools Windows into thinking that an additional monitor display is installed. Windows then activates the built-in multi-monitor capabilities and extends the desktop to an additional screen. The content of this extra screen is transmitted to your secondary PC via a standard network connection and displayed by the MaxiVista Viewer program."

Sounds slow to me, but you can download a trial version. I may do this later in the week, so stay tuned. If you do try it, let us know.
--Screenshot of someone doing three monitors with this software

# Permalink Posted at 2:27 PM 9 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

Somehow, a multi-output display card and a second monitor sounds cheaper and easier than trying to cobble a desktop and a laptop into one workspace. Matrox makes 3 output display cards, and both Nvidia and ATI do 2 output models. There are others out there too.

Put it this way, a laptop makes a pretty pricy second monitor, what with all that redundant CPU power, RAM, etc....

# posted by Anonymous 3:03 PM

I totally agree. The only reason I found it interesting was that it allowed you to either use your laptop in another way if you have a desktop and laptop setup as many people still do, or if you have a bunch of older laptops. I'm think of my company where we upgraded people and have laptops that are used mostly for spare parts, a helpdesk guy could set up a three-panel display for $49.

# posted by Alice 3:11 PM

Its nifty, but I don’t see it being a very highly sought after piece. Most people that would have a 2nd computer as a laptop, could just as easily just plug their primary pc monitor into their laptop and have a dual monitor setup as well. And most wouldn’t have a 2 desktop setup next to each other, so I guess its rather at a point of a select few users. Stringing multiple laptops together would just waste desk space and power for the most part, hehe. --Chris

# posted by Anonymous 3:35 PM

For people who already have a laptop, and not enough monitors, this sounds rather usefull, and cheaper than buying a new video card. I'm gonna try it after I get home from work.

# posted by bkofford 4:49 PM

See the linux packages x2x and x2vnc.
==mdlbear

# posted by Anonymous 5:27 PM

Oh. Nevermind. It's only a 30-day free trial. They want nearly $50 for the program. I could probably find an entire monitor for that much.

# posted by bkofford 7:34 PM

I think its neat as well but its applications are kind of limited considering the alternatives that are out there, not very practical to use laptops or any other PC as just a second monitor, Ive setup systems with 4+ monitors on the same system relatively cheap and fast with multi head cards, for a multi monitor solution I give it a thumbs down, but Im sure in the world of geekdom some impractical cool things could be done with it.

# posted by Anonymous 8:19 AM

My favourite part is that they refer to the PCs as Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Fourth.

# posted by Terry 11:43 AM

My Apple powerbook can either mirror it's display onto an external display (useful for projectors) or just use an external display as additional screen real estate. It's very useful and seems like it's the way things should work. As I understand it this software requires that both monitors be attached to networked PCs. Requiring a dedicated PC to drive the 2nd monitor seems even more heavyweight than requireing a 2nd video card. The cost of the software seems small compared to the cost of the pc laptop required to drive the display...

# posted by Anonymous 11:31 AM

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