bhtooefr's Journal: MaxiVista Review

MaxiVista is a product that lets you use another computer (let's say, your laptop, or an old beat up desktop) as a second monitor via a network. Windows is actually totally unaware of the fact that it is software - it thinks that there's another graphics card in there. I tried the demo version, to see if it could help alleviate my dual-monitor woes (damn you, Microsoft, for making it say "(Multiple Monitors) on Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller", even though it doesn't support dual-monitors...) Here goes...

The Good: VERY fast. While I didn't try playing DVDs in a window moving between two laptops, neither of which are the host system (couldn't, even if I wanted to - the demo doesn't support it), I did do some light stretching of windows (ah, maybe a VS.net window, and a quick Moz-based VB app that I had whipped up before in between the two monitors), and played with it. The network was hardly optimal for this sort of thing, and it was almost as responsive on monitor 2 as on 1. The only thing more responsive that I had played with on that network was Remote Desktop Connection, and not by much (forget about non-Tight VNC without UltraVNC's video driver)... It didn't want to connect, but I'm not blaming that on it - the network was hardly friendly to that sort of thing. Setup was fairly easy. Also, if you have the full version, the viewer program is smaller than 300KB.

The Bad: It costs $50. Still, it's better than the other option for dual-headed laptops (the Telegnosis/MCT/Tritton/Sitecom/whoever can buy the boards from Telegnosis/and their brothers USB2 to VGA adaptor), which is $90. Granted, this thing DOES need more hardware (another computer), but it basically needs to be able to run Windows 98 (or a VERY minimalistic Linux with Wine - that is acknowledged by the company to work, but isn't supported), and be on a network. You can get something that does that for free.

The Ugly: What ugly? It seems to work just fine.