I have a late-model PC laptop with external VGA port, and with PCMCIA and USB available. I’m currently dual-monitoring through the external VGA port.
Is there a reasonable way to triple-monitor using a PCMCIA or USB graphics card that 1) isn’t going to be unbelievably expensive in price or effort and 2) Gives halfway decent performance (it doesn’t have to render 3d games or dvd’s at a fantastic rate, but it shouldn’t lag obviously if it is being used to display word processing or web browsing)? There are obviously no PCI slots available.
Same company also makes docks that accept PCI-E video cards.
There are also USB solutions, but until USB 3.0 is common, I doubt you’ll find any that would perform nearly as well. Maybe I have a high standard of what I consider acceptable, but from most reviews I read of them, they have trouble with moving images, or sometimes even the mouse pointer, when running at high resolutions.
The USB-to-DVI (or VGA) adaptors work great for the purposes you’ve described. I’ve had two of these EVGA units for a couple of years and I use them all the time for development. I carry a laptop for my work, but when I’m home I just plug in a hub (not even a powered hub at that) that stays tethered to a couple of these units, a mouse and keyboard, and I’ve got a nice dual monitor display with plenty of workable real estate.
USB 2.0 is not a limiting factor. I even watch full-screen movies on them from time to time. There is a bit of lag and choppiness (especially if your CPU is busy doing other things) but it’s not unbearable. USB has more than enough bandwidth for typical non-GPU-intensive things like coding and websurfing though.
All the USB video devices I’ve owned have a DisplayLink chipset, and I would imagine that all the others mentioned in this thread use it as well. They work really well.
Note that the one I linked above tops out at 1600x1200. More recent devices will allow you to use higher resolution displays.
I used a Tritton See2 USB 1920x1080-capable adapter that was awful, and now I’m using a DisplayLink-based Diamond BVU195 that is also 1920x1080 capable, but actually works well. The Tritton See2 never worked at all with Windows 7, and it had a noticeable lag when moving stuff around or watching video. The Diamond, on the other hand, is awesome. I can watch full-screen video on it with no noticeable lag, and I don’t notice a difference moving windows around on it vs the ordinary PCIe video card. Our whole development team uses the Diamond BVU195 now to provide triple monitor support for their laptops.
This is probably a right dumb question, but just because I’ve been meaning to get myself a second monitor: these adapters work with a desktop just as well as with a laptop, correct?
Yep, that’s how I personally use it, on my desktop to support a triple-monitor setup (my video card supports dual monitors with its DVI and VGA ports). Then the Diamond BVU195 supports a second DVI-connected monitor.
Similarly, the developers with MacBooks use the laptop display as one monitor, its external monitor connection as a second, and a BVU195 for a third.