• CrunchGear: Plugable shows off new USB display and docking adapters
• HotHardware: Plugable Technologies Intros New DisplayLink-Enabled USB Products
• NewTechReview: Plugable Technologies USB UGA Docking Stations

We’ve been able to get the UGA-125 down under the $50 price point with all the great service and free shipping benefits of Amazon.com. But for our fans who follow Plugable, we have an additional discount.

Enter claim code “LOVEPLUG” before checkout, and you’ll get an additional $5 off. But only during our launch window, from now until the end of April. And only selling in the USA for now, sorry.

And whether in the market for a new product or not, we’d like to send a big “thank you!” to all our loyal customers who take the time to follow what’s new at Plugable.

This video shows two similar 2-monitor setups: the first using PCIe graphics, the other using Intel chipset graphics + a DisplayLink USB chip like the kind used in Plugable’s products.

The DisplayLink solution takes the power consumption from ~80W down to ~50W. Over time, and as you add more monitors, that’s a huge savings.

Read more about this at http://www.displaylink.com/power_saving.html

A couple interesting things covered:

• The usefulness of multiple monitors – once you’ve used them, it’s hard to go back to the limits of one screen.
• They show using the DVI-to-HDMI adapter included with the UGA-2K-A, to add a 42″ LCD TV as a third laptop monitor. Nice!

And they summarize the review with this:

It does exactly what it claims it’s going to do. If I had to register any kind of complaint, I’d say that this could be considered a “gateway drug”…because if I can rock three monitors, what’s to stop me from six or eight?

Exactly what we think, too. Of course, by that analogy, we’re dealers …

One quick note: the review mentions our old pricing of $72.99. Fortunately, we’ve been able to increase our volumes and lower our prices as a result, so the UGA-2K-A is now $69.95. And because this technology is most exciting when it’s not just one but several extra monitors on a single PC — we’re also offering a temporary promotion of $10 off for every two you purchase. All the details are shown on Amazon.

If you don’t have extra monitors around, something like the Acer X203H bd 20-Inch LCD Monitor at 20″ diagonal and 1650×1080 resolution, is a good mid-range companion to one of our adapters. But again, any VGA, DVI, or HDMI monitor will do.

A few things that have evolved since the video:

* Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac support
* Open Source exists for programming the DisplayLink chips
* It’s hard to find monitors with DisplayLink integrated, but it’s easy to find the adapters that work with any monitor (like our UGA-2K-A, which uses the DisplayLink DL-195 chip)
* The video showed an adapter with only VGA out. Our provides the more flexible DVI out, and includes simple, passive DVI->VGA and DVI->HDMI adapters which work transparently.
* The video doesn’t talk about resolutions, but the newest chips like the DisplayLink DL-195 can hit higher resolutions and/or have higher quality motion video playback at lower resolutions.

And it’s still the best and easiest way to outfit a cool bat cave.

The DisplayLink DL-195 chip inside this adapter is the best high-end chip out there for adding a display over USB. And because it pushes USB 2.0 and analog VGA to their limits, it isn’t likely to be beaten by any other chip in the USB 2.0 generation.

For this new adapter from Plugable, we wanted to offer that high-end choice, and also make sure that everything else about the adapter package itself meets or beats any alternative out there.

• The Plugable UGA-2K-A includes a DVI->HDMI adapter (in addition to the usual DVI->VGA adapter)
• The latest drivers are available on Windows Update and from displaylink.com
• Open source available, so there’ll be new software written for this device, even years from now
• Public problem reporting and support, so you can always get the full story about the product
• Amazon’s fast shipping and A-to-z guarantee on your purchase

In future posts, we’ll cover some of the cool things this device can do by enabling many displays on any PC (things like create the ultimate day-traders’ war-room, with many displays built around a single laptop).

Until then, you can read more about the product launch in the stuffily worded press release here. And more on the product page at http://plugable.com/products/uga-2k-a/.

DisplayLink’s new thin client materials also provide a bunch of additional detail, with good bullet points on why simple USB connectivity provides real value for this scenario.

Companies like Sun, nComputing, Miniframe, and Userful have sold products for Windows and Unix in this space for some time. The unix world has had various forms of multiseat capability forever — not to speak of traditional X terminals and all the thin client network protocols like RDP, ICA, and VNC on Windows and Unix, which people think of first when they think of terminals.

But when it comes to true multiseat (locally connected devices, treated as terminals), Linux has had it first, has lots of advantages in terms of licensing cost and performance, has gotten hundreds of thousands of seats in use — and yet hasn’t quite make it easy enough for end users for it to reach its full audience.

So these new product launches, now with Microsoft on board, definitely have the ability to raise more awareness of the potential of this scenario. It’s a challenge to the Unix and Linux crowd to leverage their built in advantages — and continue working on the shortcomings of Linux as a client desktop — in order to continue to provide compelling competition in this market.

Either way, the additional exposure is great for communicating the potential of multiseat.

A wonderful plug and play experience. See video below for more.

(like the subliminal message at the end? I can’t figure out how to make it go away. )

And so, we’re proud to announce that the Plugable Universal USB 2.0 Docking Station (UD-160-A) is now — as of Saturday night — for sale on Amazon here in the US. And at a price around or better than any other product with similar functionality.

Because the product fulfillment is handled by Amazon, so you get their reliable same-day turnaround on orders. And all of Amazon’s consumer-focused guarantees and order support.

For more of the product details, see: http://plugable.com/products/ud-160-a/
And for support forums, see: http://getsatisfaction.com/plugable/products/plugable_usb_20_docking_station_ud_160_a

This is a surprisingly flexible and useful device. But that can also make it hard to picture before you have one in hand. So over the coming weeks, look for a series of posts here about how to make the most of the Plugable dock, including some of the most interesting and valuable use cases on Windows, Mac, and Linux.