The other day a client of mine presented me with a situation in which he needed to add a second monitor to his PC. The solution. An external USB 2.0 video card was just the ticket.
External video card you say. Yep. But you thought you had to open the PC, pop a 2nd video card into a PCI slot, get it to share IRQ’s nicely and mess with driver compatibility, etc. right? Wrong. That’s so old skool. External video cards have been around for a little while however recently they have become very cost effective, simple to install and best of all very portable.
I choose a product by Startech, the USB2VGA external USB 2.0 video adapter. It simply plugs into any available USB 2.0 port and bam there ya go. Load the driver which comes on a mini CD and you’re ready to rock. Now just hook your second monitor up to the external video adapter, configure you preferences to mirror, primary or extended mode and you’re set. That’s it? Yep.
A few key features of the card include:
- Add a secondary display adapter and extend your desktop without taking apart your computer to install a new video card
- No power adapter required and easy to install
- Supports resolutions up to 1280 x 1024
- Supports Windows 2000/XP
- Works with desktop and notebook computers
I haven’t tested this device with Windows Vista and didn’t see any Vista drivers on Startech’s website for this adapter. Better call Startech first to check compatibility if you’re planing on running Vista.
One thing about Startech that did tick me off a bit was the fact that I called them before purchasing three of these adapters. They assured me that I could run 3 at the same time on the same PC so that I could run 4 monitors at once while utilizing the on-board video adapter. IT DOES NOT WORK!
The tech I spoke with at Startech was new and gave me the wrong information! You can only run one of these adapters at a time. Be advised, just in case.
All in all, for about $85 bucks retail the Startech external video adapter is a cost effective, simple and portable way to add a second monitor to your PC without having to crack open the case. (c) 2007 ElectroGeek.com
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Found your post with a Google search. Thanks for the excellent info. As for hooking up multiple USB units, your problem may simply be an issue of power. The USB bus can only handle a certain amount of power pull, so you might want to try an AC powered USB hub and hook your external vid cards to it. Worth a try.
@ Sean It wasn’t an issue of lack of power. It was actually a problem with software driver that simply wouldn’t allow 2 instances of the video card to run at the same time. I don’t know if Startech will ever come out with a driver that will support running 2 of their cards at once.