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The Traveler is Appian's PCMCIA video card for laptops, adding support for multiple monitors to your laptop. Test systemDELL Latitude CPt S with a 600 Mhz Mobile Celeron and 128 MB RAM. Built-in video card is an ATI Rage Mobility. Operating systems used: Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1, Windows Me. InstallationInstallation went without problems, I used the 1.02 drivers with both Windows 2000 and Me.
2D features2D quality is good, only the available resolutions are a bit limited. Here are the maximum display modes:
Lower colordepths don't offer higher resolutions or better refresh rates. On Windows Me, I wasn't able to get anything better than 60 Hz refresh rate. Video overlays are supported, which enables excellent fullscreen video playback. 3D featuresThe card has hardware-accelerated Direct3D (only on Windows 2000), but unfortunately it isn't very useful, at least with the drivers I tested. But see for yourself:
The first image shows the Billboard sample from the DirectX 8 SDK running on the ATI Mobility, the second image shows the same sample running on the Appian Traveler. Looks like the Traveler is missing some basic blending options, and it has problems with text. Another problem is that you can't use the 3D features at all if any other monitor is enabled. If the Traveler was using 24-bit color, 3D apps running on the ATI card would fail. There is no acceleration for OpenGL, but OpenGL apps would run fine on the ATI (if it was primary). HydraVisionAppian includes their HydraVision software, which consists of a virtual desktop manager and a multi-monitor utility. The desktop manager is quite good, but doesn't show desktop toolbars on all desktops, which is very annoying if you have the Quick Launch toolbar on a secondary monitor for example. Most of the features of the multi-monitor utility aren't really needed on Windows 2000 and Me, due to the native support of the operating system for things like maximizing windows to a monitor instead of the desktop, and for positioning dialogs correctly. The hotkeys are much more useful, Find Cursor for example points a big flashing arrow at the cursor, very helpful if you don't know where you left the mouse.
Hot swapping and power savingOn Windows 2000, standby and hibernation are disabled, and you can't eject the card while it is in use. On Windows Me, standby and hibernation aren't disabled, but simply don't work. Hot-swapping the card works fine. Specifications
SummaryA good card for standard 2D applications and video, unfortunately the support for power saving is sorely lacking, and the 3D support isn't all that useful in the current state. Hopefully a future driver update will address these issues. Traveler vs Display-to-GoThe Display-to-Go is the PCMCIA video card from Margi, read my review here. Both cards have problems with power saving, and while the Display-to-Go has no 3D support, the Traveler doesn't fare any better with the more or less unusable implementation. 2D is good with both cards, but the Display-to-Go supports higher resolutions. The Traveler is slightly more expensive, but includes both DVI and VGA connectors. All in all, I think the Display-to-Go is the slightly better deal, but things may change if improved drivers become available. One advantage of the Traveler (at least on my laptop): it is apparently better shielded against interference: when I run my laptop on AC power, I get interference which is noticeable as noise on the Display-to-Go and the audio line-out. This is a problem of the laptop, but fortunately the Traveler is completely unaffected by it. More information |
