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Matrox's Extio Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Matrox isn't as dead as some of us thought. This box of tricks lets you connect four displays up to a PC that's 250 meters away. All the graphic data is sent down a fiber optic cable to the Matrox box that then connects to the screens. To the end user it feels like they're working directly on the PC, but the PC can be locked away somewhere safe."
They're from Montreal, what did you expect?
Kidding aside, I left Matrox after G450, they knew they couldn't compete in the consumer-priced 3D market (nVidia just spent too much money and ATI went chasing nVidia). It was sad to see them go.
They seem to know their market, it's just not you that's in it.
Matrox being dead or not dead, whatever some of us thought, at least Matrox's marketing department is able to make excellent use of the powerful /. publicity-tool "post [your product name here] as an anonymous coward".
Her vocabulary was as good as - like - whatever
THe bandwidth of this unit far exceeds anything you could do with wireless - four 1920x1200 digital displays, keyboard, mouse, audio, and USB ports over fiber...
This unit is designed and PERFECT for financial "turrets" where traders have up to four screens on their desk at one time... This solution allows them to get the computer hardware out of the turret, allowing them to pack more traders in a given space.
This isn't for the home market, even the home "enthusiast" market, nor even the insane, "gotta have it" home market - this is for certain users with very specific needs where cost isn't really an object...
As for the price, this unit includes the four port video card, that helps explain some of the cost (for example this Matrox card is $750 and provides 4 video outputs...
Ken
Don't know why this has been modded insightful. Regardless of where the laptops are physically they would probably be connected to the same network or subnet anyway. It's not like where a PC is physically located has any bearing on what network you would connect it to nowadays.
I dont read
Yes, but who is allowed to carry laptops vs who is allowed to enter the server room?
Are the people carrying laptops really going to wait for the poor "server room" person to carry their laptops in and hook them up?
After all he did say it's "for security reasons".
I'd just let people use their laptops wherever they are on a separate network, turn on various security stuff on the switches etc.
Plus if I were in Sales or some other not-IT dept, I wouldn't even want me or stuff assigned to me to have been in the server room and risk even being blamed for bad stuff happening in the server room.
Imagine if the Sony batteries in a laptop blew up while it was in the server room.