Two Displays - One Monitor

XYZ Computing have a review of a multilayered LCD display. I'm not sure i could get my head around using one.

Quote:

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Setting up the monitor is fairly simple. The ingenious key to its design is that the monitor is specifically designed to be used with dual-head video cards as a dual-monitor array. Instead of two monitors being used side-by-side, the monitors are stacked two deep. Underneath the monitor there are four separate input ports: an input for each display in your choice of VGA or DVI flavors. Even better, the monitor comes with four different cables, two standard VGA and two DVI, fully capable of supporting any configuration. In order to begin using the monitor as it is intended, one merely needs to set up the dual-monitor layout in their graphics card’s driver control panel.

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[The review]

Funky, but to me it avoids the whole point of having a two monitor setup - that being that you can see information of both screens at the same time to save you having to switch programs.

I think a better use of this would be as a sort of KVM replacement where you'd have 1 machine hooked up to input1 and another to input2. But even then a good quality KVM is a fraction of the cost and from the sounds of it, better quality too.

Still an interesting idea though :)

I scanned the whole article pretty quickly so i have probably missed some important
points but,

I dont get it, what does it do exactly?

Does it display two screens at the same time? surely that will just be a mess.
If its just one at a time well whats the point in that you just use virtual desktops
like in solaris/linux etc.

The only interesting thing i read was about depth, if this can be utilised to produce a
3D effect then thats very interesting but no much was said about that at all.

What am i missing here?

This best sums up how it works IMO

Quote:

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all white pixels in the foreground are transparent and allow the user to see through to the rear display.

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My thoughts are: Wouldn't a 3D or virtual desktop perform as well, but without any special hardware?

I don't see how you'd be able to have two webpages open on the two different screens (but the same screen!), and read the effectivley. You could do this easily with a normal dual display, but youldn't words overlap and stuff here making it near impossible to read?