I am frequently asked how I manage to get my workstations to make use of so many monitors to simultaneously show the output of a single system. While there are various ways to accomplish this, often involving multiple graphics cards in a single system, I have been using configurations whereby each system has a single graphics card that uses two outputs in order to create a dual-screen setup, while enhancing the functionality of the screens on other systems using a wonderful software-only solution called MaxiVista.
Driving multiple screens on multiple computers over the network using MaxiVista
The following illustration show the basic way that MaxiVista works.
Having installed MaxiVista on the primary PC and one or more MaxiVista viewers on one or more secondary PC’s you can simply extend the number of screens of the primary PC by using the screens on any of the other PC’s. The network connection is used to drive these other screens and let me tell you, it is fast, very fast. Bandwidth usage on the network is very low and there is no problem with lag or jitter when moving windows around on the secondary PC’s. If I need to extend one system’s dual-screen configuration to a four-screen configuration I basically just start the MaxiVista viewers on a second system’s dual-screen configuration and extend the total desktop space instantly. That’s all it takes, no voodoo or magic other than that provided by MaxiVista.
For more information on multi-monitors
- http://www.multiplemonitors.org/
- http://9xmedia.com/
- http://realtimesoft.com/multimon/
- http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm
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