Here’s a selfish attempt to make you click through the story… there’s a link at the bottom of this story that you can click to possibly win one of the devices I am about to describe.

Multiple monitors have become the norm, not the exception, in the hi-tech workplace. There’s simply too much to gain from expanding your desktop real estate to overlook the advantages of an extra monitor or two. Unfortunately the process of setting up a multiple monitor system is not necessarily a task for the PC novice and the limitations of DVI/VGA specs mean that we are often limited in where and how we can deploy our monitors.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just plug in a monitor the same way that you connect a flash drive?

Well now you can thanks to the guys at DisplayLink.


DisplayLink makes a chipset that enables users to quickly and easily add up to six monitors to their desktop or laptop with nothing more than a USB 2.0 connection. We met the DisplayLink crew at Showstoppers and they demonstrated a handful of displays that were linked to a single laptop using either a built-in DisplayLink port or external VGA/DVI-USB adapter.


Using the DisplayLink is quite easy. If the display has a DisplayLink port, you simple plug the monitor into your Windows XP or Vista computer (a Mac version is coming) and your PC will recognize the new video device. If the monitor does not have an integrated DisplayLink port, you can use an external adapter to connect your USB device to a VGA or DVI port.

The most obvious feature of the DisplayLink-powered devices is the speed at which video is transmitted. Previous USB-to-VGA adapters that I have used have, for the lack of a better word, sucked. Sure they were easy to use, but their maximum resolution was ridiculously low and the limited performance of the adapter made anything by static text unreadable. DisplayLink avoids display lag and low resolutions by utilizing a hardware/software solution that increases the available bandwidth to the USB-Video adapter while also lowering the amount of data that has to be processed.


We can expect to see DisplayLink technology in more products over the next few months. Samsung and LG have already shipped LCD displays that offer VGA/DVI and DisplayLink ports, and other vendors such as Kensington and IOGear have designed USB docking stations around the DisplayLink chipset. The uberGeeks at DisplayLink are sending TTS a demo unit that we’ll tear apart just for you….

If that’s not enough to get you interested in the USB graphics adapter, the guys over at Display Link are GIVING AWAY 50 UGAs on January 15th. Click the link – Visit the site – Check out their tech and get multiple!

Last 10 posts by Robert Ballecer