My employer bought on to the HP E-pc machines with "NO" room for expansion. Are there any USB based video solutions that would allow me to run a second monitor from the USB port. I'm a developer looking to run two screens.
Thanks for the input.

Yes there are such things.
I know of the CTX 17" Trinintron USB Monitor
and ther Mitsubishi Dimond control monitors. But have not seen places to buy them. But you have to see what video card you currently have, and see if it has dual monitor support, ATI for instance has it, i also belive windows 2000 allows you to do so, but for a straight answer on that youd have to call tech support.

-Tim

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet get smaller.

He wants to run a second screen *FROM* the USB port, not get a second screen that has a usb port on it. I looked at the ctx 17" trinitron "USB Monitor", it runs just like any other monitor - you can't plug it into a usb port and get video!

I think I can safely say there aren't any solutions where you can plug something into a usb port and get a second screen - USB doesn't have the transfer rate for it. I dunno if I looked up the correct max. transfer rate for usb 2.0, but if I did (60 mB/sec?) you would get approx. a 35 Hz refresh rate if you maxed out the entire USB 2.0 bus, running a measley 1024x768 at 16 bit color, and that's assuming no information transfer overhead, just straight up getting the data over to the screen, as well as 90% bus utilization.

One thing I have seen is large format monitors, though. I don't personally know where to find them, but a college prof. of mine works on deciphering ancient Israeli tablets, and they gave him this awesome looking wide-format monitor. It's not quite as wide as two screens, but it's definitely better than just having one. Believe me, I know how much dual screens helps when you're programming.


-- Monkeys? What does this .sig have to do with monkeys? --

BTW I'd suggest you express to your employer the fact that those things don't suit your needs... the whole point of the PC's architecture is that it can change to suit your needs, and those things kill that whole idea. You might as well buy a Nintendo with a word processor. As the local computer fix-it guy, I *hate* coming up to some computer that's been upgrade-castrated, both because I have to deliver the bad news and because I obviously don't get to be paid for upgrading it for them.


-- Monkeys? What does this .sig have to do with monkeys? --

"He wants to run a second screen *FROM* the USB port"

The products I mentioned were usb monitors!

But as I said having two screens will depend on what the original graphics card will allow

!!!!
-Tim

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet get smaller.

But the "USB monitors" won't get video by plugging into a usb port, they're just a normal everyday monitor with a USB hub hot-glued to the inside of the chassis. If he had a video card that would support dual screens, he could get any monitor he wanted and wouldn't be looking for a "usb video device". And in any case, he doesn't because he said he has one of those goofy E-PC's, which are the ones with the built-in flexible LCD screen on an arm, and everything proprietary.
Link:
http://pandi.itrc.hp.com/busprod/s [...] rLayId=106

Quote from specs page:
Ultra Small Form Factor model, Intel Pentium® 4 1700MHz, (... snip ...) CD-ROM: CD-SLIM 24X IDE, graphics: integrated

which is why I told him not to look at those monitors you suggested, because they are nothing close to what he's looking for, not trying to sound angry or put you down or anything, but they aren't and I didn't want him to waste time looking for something that isn't there.

Here is a link to a wide format screen, but the problem now is does that thing even have a plug for an external screen? Since they just say "integrated" under graphics, they might not even have one plug to work with. These wide screens turn out to be really pricey too, unfortunately.

http://www.electrified.com/plasma.html

-- Monkeys? What does this .sig have to do with monkeys? --