Dell Puts SVGA Projector in Your Pocket for Only $500

Paul Lilly — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:39:41 -0500

Back in July, a leaked Powerpoint slide surfaced revealing Dell's plan to release a pocket projector, but it didn't say when or for how much. Those questions are answered today, along with a list of final specs.

For less than what some early adopters paid for a first-gen iPhone, Dell will sell you a pocket projector capable of an 858x600 (SVGA) resolution. The $500 Dell M109S On-the-Go Pocket-Sized projector checks in at 0.80 pounds (down from the Powerpoint slide's target weight of 1.1 pounds) and will fit in the palm of your hand. Dell rates the M109S at 55 ANSI Lumens with a projection distance of 94.5 inches. And to keep the clutter down, the pint-sized projector uses the power adapter from a Latitude or Vostro laptop. True to the slide, the shipping version remains green with a mercury free LED source Dell says will last up to four years.

Look for availability in the US right away, with a global roll out in the coming months.

Image Credit: Dell

Tritton SEE2 USB 2.0-to-SVGA Adapter

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:54:43 -0500

There are some things that just shouldn’t be attempted: SATA ISA adapters and x16 PCI-E modems, for example. To that list, we add the USB 2.0-to-SVGA adapter! No fooling, someone has made a graphics adapter that plugs into your USB 2.0 port.

We had the adapter up and running on our zero-point system in a couple of minutes. What we could do with it, however, is limited by the low 480Mb/s bandwidth of USB 2.0. Displaying a web page or static image worked fine, but trying to run video of any quality was impossible. The device let us run up to 1024x768 resolution, but only at 16-bit—32-bit sucked too much bandwidth. At lower resolutions, the adapter performed a little better, but not great. When a window is moved around the desktop, the card redraws it at speeds just slightly better than a graphics card without drivers.

The actual utility for this device is difficult to fathom. Modern PCs support a minimum of two monitors, as do most notebooks. Dual-card rigs can run up to four monitors. So adding an additional, non-accelerated screen that really shouldn’t be running a resolution higher than 800x600 is kinda goofy.

Does that make it useless? Not quite. We actually found a couple of handy functions. Because SLI takes over both cards during 3D gaming, the adapter allows us to run a second monitor to watch our CPU utilization or temperatures. And folks looking for an easy way to power a small LCD mounted in the front of a case can use the USB adapter to power the graphics. Besides those specific instances, however, the USB to VGA adapter isn’t too useful.

Month Reviewed: July 2006

Verdict: 5

URL: www.trittontechnologies.com

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Dell Puts SVGA Projector in Your Pocket for Only $500

Tritton SEE2 USB 2.0-to-SVGA Adapter