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Multi-Monitor Action
Another nifty feature that's currently in beta-testing is a display driver so that the ID-75 can be used as a secondary display device. For an example on how I used this, take a look at this shot.
As you can see (kinda), I've got Winamp running in the ID-75 window, and the playlist for Winamp is shown on the main screen. It's really only there to point out that the two are tied together, and that the main Winamp window is on the second display window. The ID-75 is only 320x240, though, and the display driver sets it as 640x480. To account for this, the driver software samples down to 320x240, allowing it to show 640x480 contents in a smaller window. Also, the ID-75 only displays in 16-bit color (The website specs say 12-bit, but the beta notes say 16-bit), so it drops down the color depth of the image as well. To make Winamp look/run normally here, I toggled Winamp's double-size view before moving the window to the ID-75 screen.
A couple of things to point out here - The ID-75 uses USB, so its refresh rate is rather slow when moving windows and cursors and thingys. As the beta note says, don't expect PCI/AGP graphics speed on this. It's best used in cases where minimal screen manipulation/changes are required.
The touch-sensitivity for the screen functions like a pen-mouse here, so, using Winamp as an example, I can press the Next Track button on the Winamp pad, and the mouse will instantly jump over and hit that button. Adjusting smaller elements is tricky, though. For example, I was able to manipulate the volume slider once out of fifteen tries. You might want to seek out Sonique and some good skins for it to take full advantage of the ID-75 as an MP3 player control.
While the display software is in beta, one feature I hope they add to the driver is a mouse snap-back feature, so that whenever I hit a button on the ID-75, the mouse automatically snaps back to where it was in Windows. This way, I don't have to scroll the mouse all the way back onto the screen.
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