From I-O Data

May 31, 2007 08:38 GMT  ·  By

You have one of the lightest and slimmest notebooks in your office, but while yours is by far the niftiest, it has some inconveniences. In order to make it that slim, the manufacturer has omitted one important detail, a video output, so you can connect it to a more generous display.

Up until now, you were stuck with the notebook's display and looked with envy at your colleagues who enjoyed a gigantic LCD monitor, but now you can do the same.

Meet the USB-RGB connector, which plugs into a free USB port and gives your notebook video-out capabilities. In fact, you have two of these, you can even connect the notebook to two displays. The USB-RGB connector even connects to projectors to help you with your presentation and to TV sets fitted with an analog PC input.

The dongle can also be used to enjoy a bigger image on the two displays or for working on two monitors at the same time, an increasingly popular trend.

The gizmo supports both aspect ratios and the corresponding resolutions, namely WXGA+ (1440?900) for wide-screen displays and SXGA (1280?1024), for 4:3 displays. For both maximum resolutions, the maximum refresh rate is 60Hz, which is fine for LCD displays, but not so fine for old CRT monitors.

I-O Data's USB-RGB has only been announced in Japan for an undisclosed price, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes available for other continents, too.

If you are an USB fanatic, you could try pairing the dongle with Brando's 5 in 1 Bluetooth Card Reader + Hub, which has 2 USB ports, a card reader and it enables any Bluetooth device to be connected to a non-Bluetooth PC.

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