I reviewed the Village Tronic ViDock a while back, and I was happy to have the opportunity to take a look at one of their more entry-level solutions for adding additional monitors to machines without an additional video port. This one, the ViBook, is a USB-to-DVI solution.

As was the case with my previous experience with Village Tronic products, I was duly impressed by their classy packaging. But I won't dwell on the shell here (no more rhyming, I mean it!). The device itself is compact, well-engineered and, yes, shiny. It connects to your computer via a standard USB cable plugged into any powered USB 2.0 slot.

It's designed to connect in one of several ways to the monitor: directly attached to the monitor's video port via a compact male-to-male adapter, via a cable directly connected to its embedded female adapter, or -- in a related manner -- via a short cable with the body of the device semi-permanently mounted on the back of the monitor with the included cradle and 3M adhesive pads. It's designed well enough that no matter where you put it, it will fit nicely and stay put (it has a studded rubber base, too). It is, by the way, both Mac and PC compatible. Read on for the rest of the review ...

I love screen space. At the same time, my primary machine is a 2nd Gen, 17" MacBook Pro, which offers only one external DVI port. In my greedy quest to add more external monitors to my home workstation, I've tried a smorgasbord of products. I quickly gave up on USB to DVI solutions due to poor refresh rates and unmanageable color, and the closest I'd been able to come to a workable solution was Matrox's TripleHead2Go. The biggest drawback to that solution (and it ended up being big enough that my TripleHead2Go is gathering dust in a corner) is that the 2 or 3 monitors you hook up to it end up being treated as one large monitor. This means that you have fewer options in positioning your displays, and -- at least with 2 monitors connected -- things like menubars, the application switcher and even newly created windows and dialogs all pop up in the split between monitors. It works, but not well enough.

We'd heard tell of a product from Village Tronic called the ViDock Gfx, but after several disappointing experiences with other products in the same vein, I hadn't been ready to shell out for another try. Then, we got a review unit and it became clear that there was, in fact, a usable solution to the MacBook Pro's multi-monitor dilemma. Read on for my impressions after a week with this unique product.

Gallery: TUAW review: ViDock Gfx