Question though: why would 2 DVI's be a prerequisite for a "true multimonitor environment"? Can't one do that type of Ultramon multimonitor situtation with the analog TH2G and two GPU cards... or is the cabling less burdensome with the digital TH2G and DVI connections?
Understand that I don't like PowerDesk, and abandoned its use with my analogue TripleHead
2Go. Before I went triplehead, I was a dual monitor user, and I got used to Ultramon, most importantly its ability to flick windows to different monitors (even while maximized) at the press of a hotkey. Assign this hoykey to a mouse button, and you can move things all over the place with ease.
Powerdesk has no such capability, so in order to move a maximized window from one monitor to another, you have to restore it, drag it to a different screen, and maximize it again. You also get a single taskbar, which means the Start button and Quick Launch are all the way over on the left, and the clock and status bar are all the way over on the right. Finally, Power desk ques everything left-to-right across the taskbar instead of placing only the taskbar buttons that correspond to that window in that window's taskbar.
Because I wanted to keep using Ultramon and have Windows think I actually have three monitors, I run my analogue TripleHead
2Go at a single-screen resolution on the Windows desktop. I then have the secondary output on my primary GPU connected to one side monitor, and the output of a secondary GPU connected to the other monitor. The monitors are CRTs with dual VGA inputs. On the desktop I run the outside monitors on Input 1, and when I game in a triplehead resolution I switch these monitors to Input 2. This gets me the best of both worlds for the price of a secondary GPU (~$50).
If you want to do the same thing with LCDs and the digital TripleHead
2Go, you need monitors with dual DVI inputs in order to maintain the best image quality. One DVI input goes to the digital TripleHead
2Go, and the other runs directly to a GPU. Technically you'd only need 2 monitors with dual DVI inputs because you don't need to switch the center monitor, but of course it's best to have 3 matching monitors.
One would think that, with a user base coming up with ways to work around the limits of Powerdesk, Matrox might spend some time devloping some relatively simple but very useful desktop management features such as window jumping and a smart taskbar.
I look forward to your review BTW... any idea when it will be ready? :)
Had some issues getting the digital edition to work properly, which I suspect had to do with leftover weirdness from the analogue. I'm up and running now, so hopefulyl in 2 or 3 weeks something will be published.
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