Until now, if you wanted to run more than two monitors on a Mac, you had to pony up for a Mac Pro. No other Apple hardware supports more than one graphics card. DisplayLink has now released a Mac beta for their USB-based graphics driver, and with the right hardware, you can now connect up to an additional four more monitors to your iMac, Mac mini, or Macbook.
The software seems to be very preliminary, as it has yet to feature either 3-D or 2-D (i.e. Core Image, Quartz Extreme) acceleration. DisplayLink indicates that these features are targets for their final release, though, so purchase of the $50-100 USB-to-VGA (or DVI) adapters necessary to make the connection seems prudent enough.
This product is truly a boon for anyone running more than two monitors (have you heard? Every extra monitor makes you 100% more productive) who does not wish to invest in a full Mac Pro just for the extra PCI-e slots and driver support.
April 1st, 2008 - 11:43 am
If they can make this new driver set work with the Core Image / Graphics system then I am in for a pimped out Mac Mini ASAP! This is a real game changer for individuals looking to have multiple monitors under Mac OS X without spending $5000 on a mac pro.