Setup

Once you insert the CD, the above splash screen is shown, followed by a clean menu. All you need is to install the software. The other items are just information and support.

Setup Installation process:



Once the Windows installer has finished, you are told to restart your computer. This is exacly what I did at this point

Software

After Windows has booted again another popup automatically adjusts the displays. You will have the secondary dual monitor at your disposal after clicking YES (JA is German).


The following window is shown automatically once you have finished the initial setup and the computer was rebooted. The PowerDesk-SE has already found both monitors and is running them at a low resolution, so that you will see them up and running, no matter how small they may be. The second image shows the same program running the same monitors at the intended 2560x1024 resolution with 32bit color. To set this up, simply click on "Change..."


Hitting this button, opens up a window with all available resolutions. Two of these can be used by the 19 inch LCDs while the other two are reserved for 4:3 20+ inch or 16:10 22+ inch units. To eliminate confusion, Matrox lists the resolution of a single monitor, which then is doubled in width to utilize both, thus the first entry in the list is the one used for this setup. You may also edit this list within PowerDesk-SE, but as we want to run at the maximum resolution the two monitors are capable of, there is no reason to do so.


Taking a look in the Display Properties (please excuse the German) we see that the two LCDs show up as one giant monitor in Windows. So no matter what external display units you have, both will run at the same resolution, taking the lowest resolution capable by either monitor and doubling it. The Matrox software can be accessed through a small icon in the system tray.


The Windows Divider is a simple utility which let's you set how the seperate Desktops behave. It was left at default, as it worked great that way. The Desktop Management part of the GXM application gives you total control as to how applications react to the extended desktop and where these open up by default.


The "About" is just a big popup with very little information in it. It holds the version number and a copyright notice.