Display in use

The color of the VFD is very bright, making it easy to read even during the day. One of the most obvious uses for the display is the use as an equalizer. Even this part works flawlessly with Winamp, without having to be set up. Once the "media" mode is chosen, the actual artist, along with the number of titles and the current time of the song is shown. The song title scrolls if it is too long. If you choose the "system info" mode, the display cycles thought all kinds of information on your PC. Starting from your installed Windows version, CPU, HDD space and such. You can decide what is shown and what not in the options menu.


Another very nice feature is the "mail" mode. Here the display alerts you about incoming mail. I sent myself an email and there you have it: One new email, 104kb large to my Techpowerup!.com email. The "city" mode displays weather, time and temperature of selected cities. This is a nice feature, but the list of available cities is very limited. The closest and only one in Austria is the city of Vienna. It would be better if the user could choose his exact location. I do not really need to know how the weather in Vienna is. The "news" option displays headlines from news. The user cannot configure the software to show any local or even national news, so this may not be of much use to most of us either, unless you live in a major city.


Last but not least, there is a "plug-in" mode. You can write your own software to use the display in this mode. It is basically like the "AUX" mode on your home stereo, letting the user feed sound from an outside device through the stereo.

The display and PC reacted to the remote control up to around 10m (roughly 30 feet) away, but only as long as there was nothing in the way. That is quite adequate considering it is a normal IR remote.

Once the PC was turned off, the Display stayed on, showing a default iMON text. This may be great if the PC is standing in the living room, but not in an office or in your bed room.