One of the perks of working for SynthaSite is great equipment - everyone in the office has a MacBook Pro (15" or 17", depending on your preference.  Or an iMac, if you prefer).  I went for a 15" MBP, since I don't feel like lugging anything bigger around.

There's one downside to the 15" MBP - the 1440x900 screen on it combined with its screen size just doesn't play nice next to the 22" wide-screen monitors we have.  I can't swap between the two in my brain nicely.  Then again, I don't think the 17"'s bigger screen would cut it either - another 22" monitor is probably needed.

So, off to look for what I imagine is a common need that should have an affordable, decent solution.  But doesn't.

There seem to be four options:

• A Matrox DualHead2Go or TripleHead2Go style device - you plug it into your computer, and plug your monitors into it.  It pretends that you've got an extra-wide-screen monitor to your computer.  It's relatively inexpensive, but you can't treat each monitor separately in your OS - at least not in OS X.
• A Villagetronic VTBook style device using PC Card or ExpressCard.  Except that the VTBook device doesn't support hot plug and play of the device on OS X (it works on Windows and OS 9) and it is only available with PC Card and my MBP only has ExpressCard, so some sort of adapter between them would be necessary as well.
• A Magma ExpressBox¹ style device - an ExpressCard to PCI Express convertor.  Add any PCI Express graphics card and you're away (well, any supported by your OS).  Would work for me - except it's ludicrously expensive.
• A USB to DVI device, such as those manufactured by DisplayLink for various companies, or put into docking stations made by various companies.  None of those support OS X yet.

Given that all of them suck pretty badly for different reasons, I was almost about to give up and just get the cheap, irritating, but survivable DualHead2Go.  But it looks like DisplayLink have announced Mac support for their USB to DVI devices, and they'll be arriving from March.  Yay!  (Except for the waiting...)

After reading this in-depth argument-ending review of Tiger (thanks for the pointer, wjv), I'm wondering where to sign up (and how to finance a Powerbook).