| Value |  5 | | Performance | 5 | | Ease of Use | 5 | | Overall Satisfaction | 5 |
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1 of 1 customers found this review helpful.
5 of 5 Finally, something that just works well, although Saturday, January 24, 2009
mkmcgregor from Birmingham, AL
From first installation, through repeated stand-by restarts over many weeks, to Windows Update upgrades, the adapter just works. It will not play games, but that's probbly not why you would buy one. You buy it to support an additional monitor to aid in work or play by adding realestate to your desktop. This does exactly that; and so far without any noticable failure. The unit is very small and portable enough to take on trips. It's bus powered, so no bulky power bricks or adapters to take along. It's literally plug and play; of course the drivers need to be installed before it's recognized (but Windows Update NOW (as of 1/23/2009) has drivers for it so this may be moot if you have an internet connection)! This will work with another graphics/gaming card to provide an auxillary window for texting or web browsing; I've been using it while playing COH and WarHammer online without any issues or noticable degredation. During normal desktop operations, CPU utilization shows as non-existant, but it's possible, although unlikely, that the drivers operate outside the perception of Windows Task Manger. You can supposedly add up to seven of these, but I've only tested the one. I cannot see any reason why more should cause a problem (Windows Display properties has a reported limit of 10). The monitor that this unit supports configures like any other throguh the Windows desktop properties settings area. The monitor shows up as TrendNet blah blah blah, and I have not tried or needed to change it by updating the monitor to one that matches the actual device. Certian functions like rotation (I think that's the only one) can only be selected from the task icon in the task bar. I'm currently running this device at 1680x1050 (actuall 1050x1680 (rotated)) at 32bit color, and so far I have seen nothing that hints that this is not a PCI-e or PCI; i.e. it behaves as a normal display without flashing (other than during installation). The only exception is that I can, while the system is running, unplug this adapter and plug into any other laptop (tried it in my Vista laptop as well with no problems) or desktop to temporarily extend the desktop there. Try that with PCI-e (don't!). The only issues would be perfromance (gaming), obviuosly, and there is a resolution limitation of 1680x1050 with 32-bit color, which puts a damper of things if you wanted to run this with a 24"+ flatpanel that usually has a resolution of 1920x1080, 1920x1200, or higher. Display is clean and sharp as expected from a DVI connection. The included DVI to VGA is nice, but I would never use it unless I had to to so due to signal degredation and ghosting; I work with text all day long. If the need arises, you can purchase (not included) a DVI to HDMI, since this is supposed to support HDCP. Colors are equivalent to the PCI-e card output that drives this monitor's twin; as is the sharpness. This is an excellent way to extend to three monitors, since most installed cards support two already, without tying up a PCI slot; for that matter finding a PCI card that has compatibility with the existing PCI-e card (sounds simple but it's not and same manufacturer does not always work). The unit runs cool to the touch (and this is currently burried behind my desk between it and the baseboard), ok just the perception of warmth, but produces little to no heat.
All in all, a bit pricey (still a 5 star value for serving a purpose)for one more DVI monitor port, but an excellent addition when needed or wanted! Was this review helpful?  
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