Multiple Monitor Solutions For The MacBook Pro

With my desktop out of action, I’m currently on my new
MacBook Pro as I’ve written,
making use of its internal screen to run things on the Mac side and one of my
external screens to run Windows apps. It annoys me that my two other monitors as
you can see in the picture above are going to waste (the picture shows my normal
setup, not the current one). But the MacBook, like all laptops I’ve seen, as
only one external output. What can you do?

Well, I started exploring options. Here’s the big caveat. I’ve not tried any
of these and probably won’t. That’s because I’m about to head off on a trip, and
by the time I get back, my desktop will be repaired. But who knows, maybe I will
some day. It’s a pain to be shifting from a desktop to a laptop, despite what I
think are my awesome and cool powers of organizing information I need to take
with me on the go. More on that later — perhaps they aren’t so awesome and
cool! But two screens just don’t cut it for me, so to stay on a laptop — any
laptop — I’d need a
multimonitor solution.

Kensington has a dual
monitor adapter that looked promising. You plug it into a USB port, and that
gives you a second external monitor. Alas — it doesn’t work for the Mac.
Kensington seems to have an issue with Macs, I guess. A USB docking station that
could do a similar thing doesn’t work for Macs either,
says this Mac
forum. And reviews

at Amazon say it doesn’t work well, period. Of course, there’s a chance that
either solution would work for my virtual Windows setup. Maybe I’ll find a way
to test it someday.

VTBook is
another solution I
stumbled upon after reading up on the MacRumors forum. This is a CardBus
solution that gives your laptop a second external monitor or even three external
monitors, if you get the
right cable.
Downside? At about $250, it’s expensive. Worse, the MacBook Pro can only take
the small ExpressCard format. That means you’d have to buy yet another adapter
like
this.

The
Magma ExpressBox
looks interesting but clunky. Got an old PCI video card lying around? You shove
it into this box, then connect the box via the ExpressCard slot and boom, you
have a second external monitor. I’m guessing if you can find a PCI card with
dual outputs, you could then have a third external monitor as well. But at about
$750, this ain’t the solution for me!

SideCar from Digital Tigers looks awesome, promising to let you run up to
four external displays. Wow! Oh, but it’s a CardBus connection, so you’d need an
ExpressCard adapter. And like $1,300. No thanks.

I like the
Matrox products
best. These are the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go. Dual will power two external
monitors; triple will do three. You can get them in VGA or DVI versions. Here’s
the magic thing. You just run a cable from your DVI output into the box. That’s
it (or so they say). And, it will work for the Mac OS. Here’s someone

proudly doing this on a MacBook pro. As for pricing, it’s about $150 to $200
depending on the version you go to. If I see one of these when I’m in New York
next week for the
Ad Age Digital Conference, I might have to go for it.

I’ll end on MaxiVista.
After finally trying this software, I’m seriously sad I’ve dumped a Windows
laptop. See, if I’m gone on a long trip, I’ll pack a 15" external monitor with
me, because I find that extra screen makes me so productive. I’m still waiting
for the laptop maker that gets smart and gives me a laptop where I can somehow
fold out a second screen!

Even though I got the smallest monitor I could find, it’s
still heavy. But MaxiVista lets you use a second laptop as an external monitor.
That’s pretty cool, because I have two old ultralights in the house, my Toshiba
Portege 3010 and

Portege 3480. Seriously light — like the hype over the MacBook Air made me
think ummm, I had a small notebook like that three years ago.

Packing those puppies would be much easier than lugging
that third monitor. So I fired up MaxiVista in Windows running under VMWare
Fusion. That was the server. The client was MaxiVista running on my old Toshiba
laptop. And wow! It worked. I totally was able to extend my monitor.

Alas, there was one small problem. When I tried to click on
something in the main screen, the main window on VMWare, the mouse was totally
off. Say I wanted to click on a button that was in the exact middle of the
screen. I’d have to slide the pointer almost to the right of the screen to
actually connect.

I contacted MaxiVista, but they provide no Mac support. It
would have been a great and cheap ($30) solution. Guess Windows users still have
some luck after all!