All Gadgets Aside...

So today I am featuring a product that I recently had a chance to test out. If you are familiar with Matrox then you are aware of their dedication to throwing more displays at the issue of lack of desktop space. For years Matrox has been manufacturing video cards with dual heads and possibly even more. But this year they released a product to take a single head card and make it useful with two or even three more displays. The device I am talking about is the DualHead2Go, or in the case of three displays, the TripleHead2Go. Recently when I was at work I had a user express the need for a laptop but he wanted extra workspace so we ordered up a laptop as well as a DualHead2Go to essentially give him 3 displays(the laptop display plus 2 external). I have to admit, I was skeptical at first but frankly there was nothing to it. I plugged in the DualHead2GO, plugged 2 displays into it and then fired up the laptop. The only thing I had to do was mess with the display properties to display everything where I needed. Basically what the DualHead2Go does is trick the computer into seeing one display with a larger than normal resolution, in this case I set up the external displays to do 2048x768. You can add additional functionality to the device by installing a small software install that will make the two external displays act more independent. In this situation I would say it was a great deal because with a laptop you aren't left with many options. If you were thinking about using this on a desktop ou might want to just check out a new video card as you will save yourself some money, unless you plan on breaking out a dual head card into four displays, or perhaps six with the TripleHead2Go. All in all it's a great product that is very easy to use.

Whatever you wanna call it, it falls into the category that I really hold a place for in my heart. I am big fan of all things that are more portable than a laptop but larger than a pda. There really is a happy medium for a "truly portable" device, this device may have hit that happy medium on the head.

The Kohjinsha SA1F00 is one of the devices that is nice and small but it has the capabilities to do anything a regular computer can(ok maybe not play top of the line games, but you understand). What really makes this stand out above and beyond is the fact that A. it has a nice price range, $750 for one with 40gb of HD space or $930 for one with an 80gb HD and Office installed. and B. because it so portable yet it has all the same aspects as a standard laptop, wifi, bluetooth, up to 1gb of ram, 5 hours of battery life. This portable wonder packs a 533mhz AMD Geode processor, which may not sound like much but for a device like this it's more than plenty. Now only if I could ditch the OS for a flavor of linux it would be great in my book(it comes standard with Windows XP). I think though that I will have to stick with my favorite portable computer of choice, the Nokia 770, oh the touch screeny goodness.