Look, you never know when you'll be 820 feet away from your gorgeous duo of dual-link displays, audio inputs, six USB 2.0 ports and piping hot cup of joe, but Matrox is here to make sure that's never a concern you'll have to sweat. Upping the ante from last year's Extio F1220, the Dual-Link Extio F1240 now plays nice with those swank 30-inchers that are gracing your desk and extends of all the aforesaid parts some 250 meters via a single fiber-optic cable. Better still, the whole thing is fanless, and there's even a mini-Toslink audio port, VGA sockets and stereo audio in / out connectors to boot. Mum's the word on a price for the currently available unit, and just FYI, that whole transfer of coffee thing is totally not recommended.

[Via BIOS]

What's got three DVI monitor outputs and a maximum output of 3840 x 1024? That'd be the promised Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition, which finally provides a "Graphics eXpansion Module" for DVI fiends with a lot of desk real estate. You kind of have to wonder whether it's worth bothering though -- you're gonna have to pay $329 for the unit and $250 or so apiece for three 19-inch monitors just to get 3.9 megapixels of screen real estate, when for not much more you can just get a single 30-inch monitor (which at 2560 x 1600 outputs more than 4 megapixels) and not have to fuss with all those boxes and screens and cables and bizarre ultrawide resolutions. Hey, we're just saying.

Although it's not likely that you'll want your optical drives to be 820 feet away from you at all times under normal circumstances, we're sure we could envision a few scenarios where it'd be beneficial (or at least rather nifty). Matrox is adding another unit to its Extio lineup with the F1220 (closeup after the break), which gives users the ability to extend up to two displays, audio, twin FireWire connections, and up to six USB devices 820 feet from the workstation. Marketed for use in "mission-critical systems, media creation, broadcasting, control rooms, and digital signage applications," this remote graphics unit (RGU) supports resolutions up to 1,920 x 1,200, 128MB of graphics memory, and features fanless operation and a Matrox-designed graphics chip within. The unit it connected to a Matrox PCI or PCI-Express Extio adapter and the data is transferred over a "standard multi-mode fiber-optic cable with Dual-LC connectors." As for availability, the firm's latest RGU won't land until sometime in Q2, and while pricing is currently unlisted, you've got a few months to save up for this presumably costly piece if you so desire.

[Via PCLaunches]

Matrox just kicked out a new version of their DualHead2Go called the DualHead2Go Digital Edition that'll let you connect two 1920 x 1200 analog or digital displays (up to 3840 x 1200 stretched across two displays) to the VGA port on your desktop or laptop. It's compatible with both Windows (2000, XP, and Vistas), as well as OS X 10.4, and should be out sometime this quarter at a retail price of $229.

[Via MacMinute]

Mac users looking for a little multi-monitor action now have another option at their disposal, with Matrox announcing that its DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go are both now compatible with a number of Apple systems. Each unit appears to be otherwise unchanged, letting you drive two or three monitors at combined resolutions up to 2560x1024 or 3840x1024 from a single video card. While the DualHead2Go is compatible with all recent Mac systems, you'll only be able to surround yourself in the wonder that is three monitors if you've got a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, or 20 or 24-inch iMac. It's not a completely ideal solution, however, requiring a mini-DVI to VGA adapter (and a step back in image quality) for use with some systems and, as impressive as those combined resolutions are, monitors with native resolutions higher than 1280 x 1024 will be too much for either unit to handle. If that's not too much of a compromise to make, you can snag each now for the same price as they were before, $169 for the DualHead2Go and $299 for the TripleHead2Go.

[Via Gizmag]

It's hard feel sorry for a reviewer who had to spend a few hours seated at a three monitor setup trying to gauge how "immersed" he felt in his favorite FPS titles, but we've gotta give the intrepid Wil Harris some props for pulling himself away from F.E.A.R. long enough to write up a review of the Matrox Triplehead2Go. Sounds like the device does work as advertised. Meaning, it splits a VGA connection into three VGA connections and tells your computer it's hooked up to one big 3840 x 1024 display. All the software seems to work fine for the various desktop configurations, and while there aren't too many games that can handle 3840 x 1024 out of the box, the included software can help get most common games up and running, and can even be extended by users to cover other titles. As for gaming, the setup comes highly recommended if you've got the graphics power to handle the added resolution. For productivity, the analog connections and further signal degradation due to three-way splitting makes the Triplehead2Go not be such a hot choice. So hold out for DVI if you must, or throw down your $300 (plus a few LCDs), jump in and get fragging.