X-Top 9X Media??™s X-Top series provides a huge variety of multimonitor
configurations, ranging from two-monitor models (starting at about $1500)
to complete video walls (which cost five figures). See the 9X Media website
(www.9xmedia.com) for details.
Step 7: Add Two or More Monitors to a Laptop
To add two or more monitors to a laptop, you need to use special hardware. As you
might expect, such hardware is expensive, so it??™s suitable only for those who must use
a laptop rather than a desktop??”for example, because they travel??”but who also need
to have more screen real estate than a laptop, plus one external monitor, can provide.
Figure 8-1 shows a typical arrangement using an external video interface.
If you need to add two or more monitors to a laptop, evaluate products such as
the following:
VTBook VTBook from Village Tronic (www.villagetronic.com/vtbook/
index.html) is an external video interface for laptops. VTBook lets you add
one or two extra monitors to your laptop, so you can have up to four monitors
total: your laptop??™s own screen, a monitor connected to the laptop??™s external
graphics port, and either one or two monitors connected to the VTBook.
VTBook costs around $249.
4.
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Project 8: Set Up a Multimonitor Monster 89
DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go
from Matrox (www.matrox.com/graphics/en/home.
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