Triple Monitor Nightmare

Hi All,

I am tearing my hair out with a triple monitor nightmare. Any help would be very appreciated.

For about a year I've been happily running three monitors from an aging Sony Vaio FE11S notebook using Matrox's magic splitter box: their TripleHead2Go 'Graphics Expansion Module'. The Matrox drivers run an extra-wide 3840x1024 signal through the GPU, which the Matrox box splits into three 1280x1024 outputs for the monitors. All was good.

Recently I decided to upgrade to something smaller. I ran Matrox's compatibility-checker tool on a Vaio TT in a Sony Centre and was told it would all work well as before. Ordered the laptop, had it delivered, didn't work. Turns out the integrated Intel GPU just couldn't cut it.

Undaunted, I returned the Vaio TT and bought a Vaio Z-series: slightly larger but with a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS GPU. Again, the compatibility-checker assured me that all would be good. It wasn't. The Matrox software refuses to output to more than two monitors, and will not produce a 3840x1024 signal.

The Vaio Z-series has two GPUs: a low-power Intel GPU and the NVIDIA chip. A rocker-switch on the case switches between the two, obviously for power-saving purposes on the move. The (incredibly unhelpful) Matrox techies blandly informed me that the two GPUs confuse their software, which will only latch onto the Intel GPU and hence will fail. They say this is a bug, but quite frankly don't have any interest in fixing it.

If I disable the Intel GPU or uninstall its drivers, bad things happen. The NVIDIA drivers crash and I'm left with Microsoft's standard v.low-res standard graphics adapter drivers.

I can't bear to send another laptop back, and can't find anything with a similar size/performance compromise.

Could anyone recommend:

(1) Anything I could do to persuade the Matrox box to work; and/or
(2) Any alternative ways to drive three external monitors from a laptop? And to this end:
--Is DisplayLink technology any good?
--Is there anything I could do with the Firewire and HDMI ports?

Many many thanks,

PXB.