Matrox TripleHead2Go gives your laptop 3 more screens

Just when we thought adding a second external display to our laptop would be the ultimate in desktop luxury, Matrox has thrown us for a loop with the TripleHead2Go, a box that -- you guessed it -- lets you add up to three external displays to almost any Windows PC. Like Matrox's earlier DualHead2Go, the device connects to your computer's VGA port and tricks the PC into believing that the three 19-inch displays now gracing your desk are actually one mammoth 3840x1024 display (and, yes, you can still use your laptop display, giving you a total of four screens). The TripleHead will be available in April for $299, which seems like a small price to pay to get behind three screens. Of course, that price doesn't include the actual displays themselves -- or the bigger desk you'll need to buy to hold them.

[Rex @ Mar 2nd 2006 2:34PM]

i've been thinking about doing something like this...but heh i just need two monitors instead of four though.

[Tom @ Mar 2nd 2006 3:01PM]

if it thought it was one monitor (3840 * 1024) then surely you wouldnt be able to have the monitors set up like that? one of the ones on the edge would be blank and the top half of the pic would be missing?
having not picked up a calculator to work this out, i may be totally wrong, but it just seems strange.

[tim @ Mar 2nd 2006 3:09PM]

No DVI? No thanks.

[NateK @ Mar 2nd 2006 3:13PM]

I've become completely dependent on my dual monitor setup. I can only imagine the bliss that 4 monitors would bring. That said, this seems like a pretty cool product, and I'm sure we'll be selling the TripleHead2Go at SewellDirect.com.

[Carl Lumma @ Mar 2nd 2006 3:13PM]

Dude, driving 3840x1024 from a VGA port is going to look like CRAP.

-Carl

[Zex_Suik @ Mar 2nd 2006 3:41PM]

or you could get completely silly and use a dual vga out vid card with TWO of these puppies and have 6 screens! Of course, you'll need a top notch vid card to push graphics like that AND a big fan to keep it cool with...this just opens all kinds of silly possibilities...

[Isaac @ Mar 2nd 2006 4:07PM]

1280x3 = 3840. So it will be 1280 wide on each screen, and 1024 high on each screen... 1280x1024 is just fine, even a little high, for a standard 19" screen and great for a standard 21".

My only concern is how it would work on widescreen LCD's... I get the feeling the answer is "it wouldn't".

At the helpdesk I used to work at many of the shift supervisors and "senior" techs had dual-monitor support on Matrox dual-head cards and 19" monitors. They came in *very* handy. You don't need special software, at least not under XP, it comes with plenty of multi-monitor support. You can either setup each monitor as a seperate desktop and the cursor jumps between them as you move it, or you can spread the desktop between them (as seen in the pics above).

For the record, if you want to watch movies, this is a terrible setup, that split between the monitor is very, very annoying, no matter how thing the edges of the monitor and how close they are, it's worse than the black bars when watching a widescreen movie on a normal TV. You could watch a movie on one monitor and do desktop stuff on the other 2 or 3, but I wouldn't recommend spreading it.

[E71 @ Mar 2nd 2006 4:25PM]

These guys are still alive? Thought they died with Matrox Millenium. Horrible graphics cards.

[len @ Mar 2nd 2006 5:07PM]

People are missing the point on this device. It is made for gaming, and pretty much only that. Windows has supported multiple monitors and multiple display cards for a while now, but games have generally been single monitor only (or at least, single card only) because of the complexity and performance hit and of having to write to multiple framebuffers. This device appears to your system as a single really freakin' wide monitor, attached to your single video card. So, if your game is smart enough, it can run on this without any problems. It's still quite a lot of pixels, so you'll need a CPU and graphics card capable of handling it,

[Jazzay @ Mar 2nd 2006 5:58PM]

1280x1024 is a lot for 19" and good for 21"?! I'm glad we can all have different opinions, because I appreciate my 1600x1200 15" and 1920x1440 19.8".

That being said, 4 x 1280x1024? I'll take two, please. Thatd be quite shwag, but a few things:

Thats some serious resolution for a laptop videocard, I can't really see anything short of top of the line playing video across all of that without artifacts and pixelizing, unless it just doesnt do anti-aliasing, but does anyone do without AA anymore?

And whats the big deal about DVI and VGA? I run dual VGA and it looks fine, my other computer with DVI looks no better. Am I doing something wrong?

[Jazzay @ Mar 2nd 2006 5:58PM]

1280x1024 is a lot for 19" and good for 21"?! I'm glad we can all have different opinions, because I appreciate my 1600x1200 15" and 1920x1440 19.8".

That being said, 4 x 1280x1024? I'll take two, please. Thatd be quite shwag, but a few things:

Thats some serious resolution for a laptop videocard, I can't really see anything short of top of the line playing video across all of that without artifacts and pixelizing, unless it just doesnt do anti-aliasing, but does anyone do without AA anymore?

And whats the big deal about DVI and VGA? I run dual VGA and it looks fine, my other computer with DVI looks no better. Am I doing something wrong?

[Alex @ Mar 2nd 2006 6:04PM]

Although they tout it as having the ability to do "surround" gaming, it doesn't really seem to add any "surround" to it. If the game doesn't have support for these other resolutions or multiple monitors, you'll just get either a stretched image, or it'll still just fill one monitor. As far as I can tell, for the price you could add a PCI video card and do pretty much the same thing but have more rendering power.

[sdwells @ Mar 2nd 2006 6:48PM]

you know what you do with this. no not lcds' we're talking CRT! three huge hopefully missmatched heavy CRT monitors and your little laptop hooked up into them not knowing why.

ok i understand this is made to help trick a computer to treat all the screens as it would one screen but come on... anyone that seriously needs multiple screens would buy a graphics card for their desktop that supports multiple screens. why would anyone want to do this with their laptop besides the novelty. laptop graphic cards are just to underpowered to use this to its potential, while for desktops its to expensive and impratical

[bob @ Mar 2nd 2006 9:58PM]

why?

[Jazzay @ Mar 2nd 2006 10:14PM]

Well, Perhaps I want to spend all my money on a serious laptop that I can have performance on the road, and performance + 3 more moniters at home, doesnt seem like such a bad idea, better than spending half the money on an okay PC with a bunch of screens and half a money on a laptop, both of poor (or less than a laptop double it anyway) performance, there are applications, just because it isnt for you doesnt mean someone out there cant use it

[Sebastian S @ Mar 3rd 2006 7:04AM]

Combine 2 of these on a video-card with 2 DVIs and most likely you will get one of this
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/27/new-zenview-offers-six-24-inch-displays-as-one/
I know I want one :)

[Jon @ Mar 3rd 2006 7:43AM]

This is perfect for Day Traders.

[Bill Fold @ Mar 3rd 2006 3:46PM]

ya no wat this would be perfect for? you could get a comp with a graphics card that supports 2 monitors and plug 2 of these into it. then plug in 6 of those zenview things that attach 6 samsung displays as 1. then u could have 36 monitors plugged into 2 vga ports on ur compooter.

[Bill Fold @ Mar 3rd 2006 3:52PM]

(of course, you would need a lot of money and six female-dual-link-dvi-to-male-vga adapters for that setup)

[gargoyle91 @ Oct 16th 2008 12:24PM]

Whats wrong with my triplehead2go system Warcraft 3.0 patch has made It look fish eyed main screen everything looks far away and the 2 side screens everything is stretched to the point it seems im looking thru a bubble ?

[Prem Nasta @ Feb 18th 2007 10:49AM]

Need to know more about your triplehead2go
Thanks