Pano's 'zero' client gets dual monitor boost
Two-monitor virtualisation better than one.
By John Dunn | Techworld | Published: 12:00, 07 October 2009
Pano Logic has followed last year's UK launch of its tiny ‘zero' virtualisation cube device with a new dongle to enable it to display output from two monitors at once.
In the world of virtualised devices it's much harder to get two video steams to one monitor than it sounds, more so in Pano's case because it has no processor, memory or software at all. The Pano Device gets its ‘zero' client status from this utter simplicity. It is no more than a connectivity box for a keyboard, a monitor and sound.
The new Pano Dual Monitor comes in the form of a USB dongle which plugs into the back of the Pano Device, and which allows the two screens to be displayed correctly without the need for any additional software.
The only other requirement to get such a setup working is for customers to upgrade to a new version of Pano's server software, System 2.8, which does the heavy graphics lifting to divide the data streams into two.
"There was a fair amount of work on the back end," admits Pano's president and CEO, John Kish. "The part nobody thought we could do is to keep the processing away from the endpoint." The demand for dual video came from healthcare, education and government, he said.
Kish criticised thin virtualisation clients from rivals such as Wyse (which Kish once headed) and HP, saying they still had too much hardware in the client. The point of virtualisation was to remove every piece of processing from the client to fully remove management completely to the data centre.
Existing customers would get the server upgrade automatically, he said. The Dual Monitor dongle costs from $89 (approx £60), through UK distributor STL Technologies.
