Comments on: Multiple External Monitors On MacBook Pro: Don’t Bother… Yet

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:55:00 +0000

I tried a USB adapter for a while (on my Windows machine) and it crashed far too often. I now use an old tower that serves no other purpose than to be my 3rd monitor, and I use MaxiVista as a network video driver. I’ve been using it for over a year, I just have to start MaxiVista when I boot up and I have a pretty stable 3rd monitor.

I’ve also used AirDisplay for the iPad as a 3rd monitor for my MBA – same principle as MaxiVista, it’s all done over WiFi.

Video performance sucks on both – but for emails, command lines, skype, things like that it’s brilliant. I hate going down to 2 monitors now, infact, I think 6 would be ideal.

By: Robert Rollins

Robert Rollins — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:43:00 +0000

I’ve been using the same setup for two and a half years now (with an EVGA UV+16), and I don’t have any (serious) issues. Yeah, the CPU usage is very high when its rendering anything moving on that monitor, but I’ve never had a serious crash because of the DisplayLink driver.

You seem to be basing your “avoid this at all costs” suggestion entirely upon the (admittedly abismal) problem with Sparrow. But making a universal suggestion like this because of one piece of software (which I’d never heard of before) is hardly fair.

By: gamom

gamom — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:21:00 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to post this, was just considering this option. You saved me time and money!

By: David Hildebrand

David Hildebrand — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 13:04:00 +0000

Thanks for the careful and thoughtful post. I just paid a bunch to get a solid-state hdd, so the last thing I need is to slow the response time down. Appreciate the time it took you to write this–I suspect you’ve just save *me* a bunch of time with frustrating external monitor experiments. (By the way, I’m running Mt. Lion on a 2012 MBP 13 inch.)

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:44:00 +0000

Another problem with USB is that MacBook Pro has only 2 ports.. Use the display link and you’re down to just one!

Pretty annoying that thunderbolt is running via the mini display port. It supports 7 devices daisy chained, although when used as the mini display, you can’t double up on DVI / VGA…

Apple’s solution? pay $2k for two displays… ha!

By: Wbrolland

Wbrolland — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 01:18:00 +0000

I’ve been considering this for my work and home computing. Really enjoyed your take on it all. Good advice in the end… I’d much rather pay for a large display for now… Thanks

By: Derek Flenniken

Derek Flenniken — Mon, 16 May 2011 21:50:00 +0000

Good to know. Was pondering that versus a single big one. Also, wasn’t aware of SizeUp, but I checked out the webpage. There’s also a free bit of software (on github even) called ShiftIt that does much the same thing.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 13 May 2011 20:40:00 +0000

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Addendum…

I also have a Matrox DualHead2Go DisplayPort edition. This was the largest waste of $200 ever, in trying to get 3 monitors perfected. It was an absolutely miserable experience with this device, the drivers for it, and how it operates both of the external monitors that are connected to it. The drivers were so bad, in fact, that I had to format my hard drive and re-install OSX from the ground up, to get rid of them.

At least the displaylink drivers uninstall cleanly, and only have a few issues with a few specific apps. I’ll take the displaylink issues over the Matrox junk any day.