What PC to drive my touchscreen?

[glabbeek]

I am using 2 15" touch screens. One is downstairs in the kitchen and one is upstairs in the hallway. They are only 3 meters/9feet separated from each and so the wiring to the screens comes together behind the upstairs screen.

I'm looking for a computer that can drive both screens. The screens use a VGA connector for video and a USB for touch control. So the PC has to be able to connect 2 VGA cables. Also it has to be low power consuming (ion) and in a small box (min-itx or pico-itx).

And off course it has to be cheap.

Regards,
Willem-Bram

[Alexander]

Attach a small pci videocard to the machine or maybe a usb videocard? Be aware that your OS has only one mouse pointer. So it could be that you will have problems if both screens are used at the same time.

[glabbeek]

That's a very good point. I didn't think about the mouse pointer!

How does that work when you use a virtual machine?

[Alexander]

Your OS will run different VM's, but still with only one mouse pointer.

[Rene]

In a virtual machine you can assign which mouse pointer is the active one, especially when the mouse is connected using USB. So you assign one mouse pointer to one vm and the other to the other vm.

[Alexander]

And how do you get the first VM to the first screen and the second one to the second screen? Two instances of VMWare workstation?

[Dickr43]

And how do you get the first VM to the first screen and the second one to the second screen? Two instances of VMWare workstation?

I use a laptop with an additional monitor in my daily work. I've created a exented desktop wich allows me to move the cursor over both screens. You could do the same with a PC and then run 2 RDP session, each on one screen. There still is the problem with just one cursor don't know if that is fixable.

If you run VMWARE server on your Host PC with 2 VM's running XP Pro this should work....

[Rene]

And how do you get the first VM to the first screen and the second one to the second screen? Two instances of VMWare workstation?

You select in one VM the first screen as the primary display and in the other VM the second display as primary screen. I think this should work. It did when I was using an USB-VGA convertor although this is not exactly the same as 2 PCI graphic cards.

[glabbeek]

Maybe 2 PC's will be the best option!