Triple Displays With a Macbook Pro

I am running 3 displays on the Apple Macbook Pro by using the Sewell Minideck USB to DVI adapter.

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1 – 1440×900 – 15.4″ Apple Macbook LED Display
2 – 1920×1200 – 24″ Apple Cinema LED Display
3 – 1920×1200 – 24″ Samsung 2433BW

I was skeptical of the usb video adapter since the previous models I tried had all sucked horribly. For the past 3 weeks the Sewell adapter has performed way beyond my expectations, however I don’t recommend watching fullscreen HD movies on it since VLC consumed about half of the CPU resources. A utility that is essential (even with just 1 display), is SizeUp by Irradiated Software which enables shortcuts to auto-position windows. This is 1 of the most handy utilities for Mac OS!

While I’m taking pics, here is my command center:

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And the Sewell adapter in production:

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7 Responses to “Triple Displays With a Macbook Pro”

  1. Tweets that mention T3CH.com » Triple Displays With a Macbook Pro -- Topsy.com:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by joet3ch. joet3ch said: New blog post: Triple Displays With a Macbook Pro http://bit.ly/bLi0vT [...]

    28.03.2010, 23:27
  2. joet3ch:

    The Mac OS 10.6.3 upgrade has crippled the DisplayLink drivers, so the 3rd display is now stuck in landscape mode until a fix is available.

    31.03.2010, 12:57
  3. Jaime:

    Is there anything else than the landscape lock issue with 10.6.3? Also what do you think of the drivers? Are you getting any kernel panics or Finder crashes? How much %CPU are they using?
    I’m thinking to have a setup very similar but I am little worried about the drivers…

    23.05.2010, 00:01
  4. joet3ch:

    Hi Jaime, DisplayLink released a new driver that fixed the issues with Mac OS 10.6.3. They rapidly fixed the issue, their support is great. So I have no complaints now and love the adapter. Fortunately I am not experiencing any kernel panics or Finder crashes :) For 1 display, I see the average CPU usage is 5% for the DisplayLink driver when I use non-video applications on that display. This is on a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip. I’m so happy with the Sewell MiniDeck adapter, that I may get 1 more soon!

    24.05.2010, 00:06
  5. Joey:

    How does it work in closed clamshell (closed lid) mode?

    04.06.2010, 01:02
  6. joet3ch:

    Hi Joey, clamshell mode works fine with both external displays still active :)

    04.06.2010, 08:53
  7. Andrew:

    Is it possible to change the orientation of the screens so that if there were 2 wall mounted screens, they could be one on top of the other continuously?

    Does your GPU do any of the work for that, or is it all in the adapter/CPU?

    Does the system lag when watching video on one/multiple screens?

    When not viewing video, is it completely flawless as if it was the internal display only, or is it slower?

    01.07.2010, 02:37

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