Bartels Media announced the release of the Windows software MaxiVista which simulates a multi-monitor setup with the use of two PCs in the case the user doesn’t have a dual-head graphics card. MaxiVista allows using any secondary PC as an additional display of a primary PC.
Simulate Dual Monitors without Dual Head
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No need to buy an extra monitor and multi-monitor VGA card
Just a second computer?
Well, it is something different, so I’ll have to give them Kudos for pulling it off on a Windows box.
Personally, I’d rather do it the Ol’ fashioned way.
The cheaper way would be to just get a second video card. Just because a single card doesnt provide dual-monitor support, you can simply use two video cards. One in the AGP slot, and another in a PCI slot. Much easier then setting up another complete system, and probably cheaper.
Of course, you would still have to have a second monitor.
This is a pretty cool idea. For the doubters above, what if you’ve got a bunch of crappy ppro 200mhz laptops laying around? They’re pretty worthless in terms of processing power, so why not use one to expand your display?
Also, think it’d be possible to use more than one “expansion desktop”? You could build a little frame and put a bunch of crappy laptop displays together to make a nice big one
dmx.sf.net
Reminds me of x2vnc (in function, not implementation). It is a VNC client that takes over the last pixel of one side of your screen, forwarding all mouse and keyboard events to the computer the VNC server is running on. It has the same effect as this MaxVista, at least visually, but the other screen is actually showing programs on the other computer. You can’t drag windows over, and the client and server are reversed so it really isn’t the same thing, but I’d put them in the same category.
I like the method MaxVista uses to do its trick, though. If the situation arises that could allow its use, I’d buy it. Particularly if the client software (I mean the part running on the computer that is serving as the second monitor) is cross-platform and doesn’t have to be running all of the time, I could justify the other computer as a testing platform when I don’t need the second monitor. There aren’t any two computers around here running the same OS, so cross-platform is a must.
I hadn’t heard of that. Cool!
The idea is nice. But it’s too slow, though.
100MHz, 75MHz, 90MHz, 200MHz… does that mean I get 5 monitors on my primary box (2.8GHz
)?
Have you used it?
The network behavior described on the web site sounds more like the method VNC uses, rather than RDP, X or such. VNC is a little slow on less than a 100mbps connection, not quick enough for video or action games on that either. Should be fast enough for its intended use though – it seems unlikely that you couldn’t rig up a fast network connection between two computers sitting next to each other. Still, their FAQ about network overhead mentions “static screens” – not a promising sign
I’d still like to see if their comment about their implementation as a driver rather than a display hook being more efficient is in any way accurate. It seems that it should be…
1024x768x16 bit = 12.6 Mb
for a 60 fps screen, that’s 756 Mb of bandwidth
Dual head support has been bulit-in on windows since win98 and since win2k, it has been rock solid.
haven’t X had this feature for a ages now? (I’m not trolling.. I think I read something some time ago about being able to do this, but I honestly can’t remember..)
1 Maxivista license : $ 49.95
1 Matrox Millenium G450 (dual display) : $ 30 (ebay item number 2780053287)
So, tell me again : apart for notebook or PDA owners, why is Maxivista product better than an old video card ?
Because its a cool, unique idea, and should inspire someone to make an open source version
Does kind of the same thing, you can even combine it with vnc or something to make it do the the same thing.
Hm.. wouldn’t it be sooo much better to shoot yourself instead of starring at the crap quality displays that come with your crappy 200 MHz laptops..? 🙂
I know I would opt for the bullet. Then again, why not get a 17″ new CRT for 99 bucks as secondary display?!
It is basically a virtual display adapter to the OS plus a vnc thingy.
Why this and not a 2nd display card+monitor ?
Laptops and some computers might not have the option to install that 2nd display adapter, so….
OSS guys lost again for a chance to innovate here.
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but I am an avid user of Synergy [ http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ ]. It allows multiple computers (each with its own monitor) to be controlled with one mouse and keyboard. I just move my mouse in the direction of the monitor which I want to control, and I can control another computer over the network. It works with *NIX (including GNU/Linux and BSD) and Windows, and I think a Mac version is in the works.
If I can’t see the monitor of the computer I’m controlling, I use x0rfbserver (on the system I wish to control) and TightVNC (on the client), or SSH with X tunnelling.
You can use synergy and vnc. Combining those two and you have an OSS solution that is even more flexible and that exists already for quite some time.
synergy is a virtual KVM, MaxiVista is a dualhead by virtual display adapter.
dualhead lets you do image editing on one monitor while those tool palettes could be placed on the other monitor.
Any one running X already has this ablity. don’t want full unix, can’t give up your windows box, CGYWIN, though very much not polished yet, allows you to run your X-windows applications straight across your network. Still need a beefy network though.
I forgot to mention, this stuff is just trying to fill the gaps in windows software, though as previous posters have said dual head support is great.
That’s why you need to combine it with something like vnc. You create a virtual screen and put that on the secondary computer. Then you can uses synergy to move from one screen to the other.
It’s all nicely done in the UNIX tradition, a program does only one thing, but does it good. Then you can combine different programs to get the nicest possible result.
Try it out, you’ll be ammazed.
That’s why we have put up this page for you:
http://www.maxivista.com/myths.htm
1. MaxiVista is *not* VNC. Not even close to it!
2. Linux is nice, but MaxiVista is a *Windows* software. Linux programs will not run on Windows
3. MaxiVista is rocket fast. Try the free demo. We will put up a video as a proof asap.
4. The CPU/network load is a fraction of other screen-over-LAN solutions because of the virtual driver technology
5. MaxiVista cost 6x times less than a physical VGA card plus(!) a monitor. A VGA card for “$30 @ Ebay” alone will not display anything.
6. Even if you have a dual monitor setup you can use it to feed a third monitor
7. Why should a laptop screen even of an older device be “crappy”? Flat panel displays by their nature do not wear down (except the backlight perhaps). Laptop displays are always digitally fed without digital-analog-digital conversion and has a razor-sharp picture quality. Better than any conventional tube screen (CRT)
8. @DaMouse: We will offer a multi MaxiVista extension pack soon
🙂
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
dualhead means two or more monitors with one keyboard/mouse with no need for kvm/synergy as it is one deskop for the underlying os.
The unix tradition is for CLI (command prompt) with mostly text file like data. Now it is in certain ways, a drag to OSS desktop performance, for example, everything to do with printing is mostly generated in PostScript format, than piped to Ghostscript, than interpreted as whatever format proper for the targeting printer. With Windows, GDI generates proper format data for a targeting printer, be it Postscript or PCL (which in most cases are a lot faster than postscript) or even raw raster data that basically directly being put on laser printer’s drum.
The pipe ( | ) is a dirty and quick solution, but it’s buffer is only 512 bytes deep. It is fine for a few kilobytes or one to two hundred kilobytes of data – however, for digital images one the order of more than 100 mega bytes, it is a big bottleneck.
100 Mbs network has about 7 MBytes/s of real-world bandwidth, and a PCI video card could easily do 25 to 133 MBytes/s at the “bottleneck”.
MaxiVista is a very useful piece of software for a setup where true dual-head is not possible, but don’t hype it to the sky with the like of “full digital” path. It is true, but the effect on a good video card/LCD setup is negligible.
Also the 6x cheaper argument assumes that there is a second laptop, but what if there is an unused monitor + a video card ?
If MaxiVista does compression, CPU speed matters and if it does caching, hard disk speed matters.
So please don’t hype it to “cure all, prevent all” level.
MaxiVista intercepts GDI drawing commands at the display driver level and relay that to the second computer for rendering, where as VNC will have to guess what GDI is doing and relay a compressed differencial bitmap.
SO MaxiVista is about as fast as Windows RDP – very usable over a dialup net link for non image intensive situations, but will still be choppy for video playback, even on a 100 Mbps network.
I am not sure how MaxiVista will claim a patent, since RDP already did this kind of GDI driver level redirection, though not for dualhead purpose.
If you can afford to have a second computer sitting around, why can’t you afford $50.00 for a semi-decent 2nd video card, and another $50.00 for a used 17″ monitor?
Dual headed cards are nice (ie, ATI 9600), but two video cards (1 AGP & 1 PCI) are often easier to get setup, especially in Linux (My dual headed Radeon 9600’s a real pain to get setup in XFree 4.x!).
Sorry… This is kinda a neat thing from a “Look what I did!” perspective, but for anyone looking for a dual headed display, there’s lots of easier and better solutions out there.
“OSS guys lost again for a chance to innovate here.”
Just right now, my laptop is placed next to the flatscreen of my desktop and I can move my mousy from one screen to the other (both running linux, network over a simple laplink). Has been like that sinds I learned about synergy…
I don’t use it in combination with vnc, but I do use unison. This way, I have the best of both worlds.
Anyway, this must make you realise that there have been solutions like this in OSS for a long time.
If you think that’s cool, check out synergy:
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
synergy is Free software, runs in Linux (X11) and Win32, runs over TCP, lets you share together more than two monitors and arrange their geometry however you want, and shares the clipboard too.
you can actually have a linux machine and a windows machine both on your desktop, the clipboard becomes cross-platform.
the author says if he can get his hands on a mac, he will port it to OS X also.
check it out, I use it at work to ease the pain of being forced to use outlook for email and internet explorer to do my timesheet, when all my real work is done in Linux.
1. Synergy is nice but a totally different thing. It is like comparing Apples with Pears. Ever tried to move a program window from one screen to another with Synergy. No way. Ever tried to drag&drop content across the screen? No way. It is something different.
2. @Anonymous: Why should MaxiVista *cache* to the hard disk? This would be the least thing we would do 🙂
3. @Mr.Banned: It is not fair to compare used against new stuff. MaxiVista may also become available at Ebay sooner or later for less money. And again, even if you have a Dual Monitor setup, MaxiVista can add yet another screen
Before you continue to guess, why not simply _trying_ it? The quality of puzzling and guessing around would dramatically increase 😉
I can tell you that the reason I’m not trying it is simple – it costs money and I want to make sure it meets my needs before I do. Part of this is trying to work my way through marketing hype. To do this, I try an compare it with existing software to determine how it compares with its competitors. I suspect that this is true of others as well.
<p>
At least for me, it is fair to compare used with new. I routinely buy SCSI drives on ebay – I’m happier with an 18 GB SCSI drive that with a larger IDE drive, for example. I have also picked up used graphics cards – last year’s choice of gamers is in this year’s dust bin.
<p>
Since I can run Linux for free, can this product be modified to run Linux on my old cheap box? I use white box computers that I build or buy. I usually install Windows (which I use sparingly but in accordance with the license) on my newset box, which I dual boot. I use Linux on the older boxes, since I find that it works better on modest hardware. If I could use a box with a free OS as my ‘second monitor’, I would be interested in this solution.
SGI had a function like this some time ago.. it was great. If you had two indy’s sitting next to each other in a lab, you could just login and take over the second display. It was a great way to add screen space on an ad-hoc basis..
The demo version is fully functional and free of charge:
http://download.maxivista.com
Of course, it cost you 5 minutes of your time though.
There is no hype. MaxiVista simply cannot be compared with anything else as it is unique in its fashion at least in the Windows world:
Again, http://www.maxivista.com/myths.htm
If you should find anything which has the same technology you earned your lifetime free license. 😉
Michael
But I tend to agree with the masses – this just isn’t going to have a whole lot of use for most people.
A hardware solution is more flexible in terms of OS usage (I run Fedora and Win2k) and more to the point, who has two computers running side by side that it’d make sense to combine the monitors like this? That’s not to mention upping the power requirements from running that second computer, and possible network bandwidth issues.
There’s also no information on whether DirectX is supported, which is typically the weak link in this sort of thing.
-Erwos
Listen guys, it’s a product. A product that the MaxiVista guys have obviously worked very hard on, and if it does the job it says it does, who are you to bash it?
If you don’t want to use it, fine; go elsewhere. You can carry on using your VNC setups and Remote X, and nobody’s going to stop you. But this is a commercial product, and somebody out there will find a use for it.
What do YOU gain from trying to stop other people from using this software? You think you’re “saving” them, by stopping them from doing what they want to do? No.
So just leave it alone, and respect the work these guys have put in.
I have to say I was a little sceptical at first, but it seems to like quite a good idea, assuming you happen to have the right hardware lying around (which many people do). I am amazed that (AFAIK) no-one ever gave X11 the ability to have different windows of the same app on different displays.
Have you thought of creating a Linux client for MaxiVista. I would imagine it would be fairly simple to modify it so that you could drag MS-Windows windows to and from your Linux desktop, you could probably use Wine to draw them. I imagine it would need a lot more modification to enable it to work the other way round, however it would be very useful even if it only worked one way around.
I think it sounds kinda cool. Windows driver sends (reasonably) raw GDI calls over the network and they get rendered on other machine.
Couple of things I thought about:
If the slave machine needs Windows to run the software, doesnt this mean *two* Windows licences are technically needed, just to run *one* desktop?
If you have an extra computer lying around (other than a laptop I guess) why can’t one just take the monitor from that computer, then by a $40 dual head card?? Nearly all cards these days support dual head, and an old matrox will even support dual dvi connections.
I guess it can be useful for using an old laptop screen though, since the screen is not detachable in most cases.
I’m using the demo right now. The setup is ingenious; I love how it uses a driver to work just like a traditional dual-head setup. Configuration could not be easier.
“MaxiVista is rocket fast. Try the free demo. We will put up a video as a proof asap.”
Unfortunately performance hardly seems “rocket fast” on my systems. It couldn’t even begin to smoothly scroll when browsing the internet, redrawing was very obvious. Dragging windows around was even worse. The only good things I could do with it is setup some mostly static screen space hogs like mIRC, Winamp, Samurize (proc/mem/net usage graphs), GAIM, and command prompt. These all have small changes and movements that Maxi handles with ease.
For browsing the web, working in PHPEdit (lots of scrolling around), doing lots of various operations that require switching windows rapidly, I’ve actually seen better performance with XP Remote Desktop from my school to my house over a cable modem. RDP feels far more optimized than Maxi.
For my primary system I used an AthlonXP1900+,512MB DDR, AIW Radeon Windows 2000. The secondary system is an Athlon 550Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Geforce 2. Linked by D-Link gigabit cards and switch.
@BOFH: Thank you.
@A.K.H.: Well, I will love to see you ripping the lid of your laptop 🙂 And yes, if you have a second desktop PC with an separate monitor, your life is saved. You save precious 50 bucks and you can claim to be happy to stay without MaxiVista
@Erwos: Jesus… Again, please read http://www.maxivista.com/myths.htm
😉
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
@William: Regarding performance: Indeed it is almost as fast as a physical screen. We will post a non-faked video showing the performance.
Please read the hints in the http://manual.maxivista.com
Just two hints here:
* Set color resolution to 16Bit -> 30% performance boost
* No background image, just plain color
Regarding performance issues or post to the support forum at http://forum.maxivista.com
We will gladly try to support you as best as we can.
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
Well, I downloaded the demo and actually TRIED IT OUT.
I have to say, it’s good, I already have my laptop setup dual-head with a CRT, and now I can use the laptop screen as an extension of my other “main” desktop – very handy.
Try it before you knock it.
Is this a joke? You can just get one dual-head video card like a Radeon 9000 for cheap and do the same thing (well at least on a Mac you can). What they’re proposing is even worse than having two video cards to drive two monitors.
If you have an Apple Powerbook you already have dual monitor capability right out of the box. Just plug a monitor into the SVGA port in the back and you have two displays (not mirroring), one on the external monitor, one on the LCD!
I was actually looking for a similar solution for about a month before I came across the Maxivista website. It was just what I was looking for. I have 5 desktops clustered around my workstation and very little room for more monitors (lcd’s are still to pricey for the screen real estate). Being a fan of duel-head setups, I was looking to increase my main box’s screen without adding hardware to my setup. I’m currently on the trial for the software now, and the performance is much better than vnc (I use tightVNC all the time). After playing around with synergy, a great project by the way, I wanted to be able to drag windows between the screens. Anyway, if you already have multiple setups and don’t have room for a new monitor, this is a great way to expand the desktop. You can use that 2nd computer with the click of a mouse so you don’t waste the machine on just the display. Neat idea.
This just occured to me: it would be REALLY cool if you could combine the function of syngery and maxivision. That is, control many computers with one mouse/keyboard, and be able to drag windows from one computer to another’s monitor, while still being able to use the 2nd computer.
I could drag a window to the monitor of another computer and it would display there along with programs that are already running on that computer.
@Alex: May be I do not understand your idea, but is this not contradicting? How shall you be able to control another PC (while of course seeing the remote’s PC desktop) while expanind the control PC’s desktop to the remote PC?
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
Michael,
I was specifically browsing the net to find a product that would let me use both PC screens in front of me right now (a desktop screen and a laptop screen), and found this page on Google. I’m trying the demo right now, and even though the 24bpp display is not that fast (I guess I can tweak it – decrease the colours and increase the wireless speed), at least my laptop display is useable while I’m using my desktop. And I can finally give way to my reflex of moving the pointer from one display to the other.
I’ll still try out synergy to see whichever meets my needs best, but my apriori feeling is that a mix between the two is what I need before I commit myself. 2 CPUs working for me at the same time, cutting and pasting from 1 PC to the other, and the capacity of moving a program’s output window from one PC to the other (à la X-Windows where the window’s output is not bound to the user’s desktop).
Next up on my wish list would be to do the same with as many computers as I can spare (which would make up for an awesome demo: have people come over and make up a large control panel made up of a bunch of displays), but that’s more a nice to have than a requirement.
Looks pretty good; thanks for the free demo!
Christian.
http://www.aibotoys.com
Michael,
Just another precision on the concept on mixing Synergy and Maxivista (if it’s any interest to you guys): I take the perspective of Hummingbird’s Exceed, which lets me use either the Windows desktop as a background for my X-Windows windows, *or* I can opt to view and use the X bacground on the Windows machine (essentially replacing the Windows dekstop). Something similar is what I have in mind, when I think of combining features from Synergy and Maxivista: in this mode of operation, I could see the 2nd PC’s native desktop as a background (and interact with its icons and applications), *and* i could move windows from the 1st PC to the 2nd PC.
Cheers (Still as impressed about Maxivista),
Christian.
http://www.aibotoys.com
For readers doubting the performance of the secondary screen
performance, please have a look at this video:
http://www.maxivista.de/videos/mv_performance.wmv
Simply try to guess which display is physical and which is transferred through the Ethernet LAN. 😉
Both are standard of the shelf IBM laptops, running at standard 1024×768 pixel resolution.
@Christian: We will discuss your valuable feedback with our team. However it sounds more like a niche, does it not?
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
You can do this with linux!
Check it out:
http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/
Use this vnc module as a second display and use your second computer as your second head. I haven’t tested it yet — but am working on it
//standsolid//
@standsolid: I would wonder whether the performance is comparable with MaxiVista? I have no Linux to check, so does it compare with this:
http://www.maxivista.de/videos/mv_performance.wmv
Also have a look at the network and CPU load which is very low with MaxiVista.
Just curious… 😉
Michael
http://www.maxivista.com
I just combined maxivista with desktop twister from superflago! Very impressing if you run desktopt wister on two machines providing 4 individual desktops on each and then expanding all four of the first pc them to one of the dektops of your second pc…. give it a try!