ironed-out posts

Ardent fans of this column will doubtless have noticed that BI has been a little, shall we say, thin on the ground of late. There are two main reasons for this -- one, BI's biennial sojourn to the other side of the country for a week of testosterone poisoning, and, two, a multi-week stint with a rather demanding guest around the house.

The guest in question, however, wasn't an unemployed former college buddy, a surprise visit from the in-laws, or a couch-surfing second cousin. It was, rather, a sixty pound, gloss-black obelisk -- Alienware's top-of-the-line gaming system, the Area-51 X58, tricked out by them with damn near every bell, whistle, and go-fast toy in their arsenal. And BI had their blessing to, and we quote this with great relish, "Send it back as a smoking pile of slag. But, seriously, watch Iron Man on the Blu-Ray drive first."

We were skeptical. Surely, entrusting someone of BI's questionable restraint with a valuable piece of equipment would carry more stringent usage guidelines than, "Give it back when we ask for it." They were adamant -- this was the third such system released to the wild, and they wanted it to be abused.

Fortunately, the conference call ended before our mad laughter began.

We've had the Mimo UM-710 display in the Big Iron slag pit during the weeks since our initial coverage, and have taken the opportunity to see how it works in the real world.

Starting from the very first impression, the UM-710 comes in a very functional and cleanly-designed box, which is both sturdy and easy to open, and did a fine job of cradling the unit in transit. There are all of four components in it (plus a driver CD and manual): the screen, the stand, the finger-friendly screw that holds them together, and the USB cable. The cable features dual jacks at the PC end, in case a single port isn't able to push sufficient juice to drive the display; on BI's home rig, this wasn't necessary.

Due to the relatively modest length of the USB cable (6'), if your box sits on the floor, you're probably going to need to utilize the USB port(s) on or near the top of your case or jack into the nearest USB hub; the one(s) on your current monitor, if present, would be pretty much ideal for this.

As mentioned in our preview, it's advertised as a three-step, five-minute install, compatible with OSX and both 32 and 64 bit flavors of Windows. BI is pleased to report that this is absolutely true -- affix the screen to the stand in the desired orientation, plug it in, and put the install disk in. The only minor snag we encountered was that the installation window didn't close after it was complete.

Coming soon will be the first installment of Ironed Out, our hands-on hardware review series. We'll be checking out the MiMo UM-710 and UM-740, a USB-driven LCD monitor. Intended as a secondary display (to park IM clients while gaming, or Photoshop palettes while doing full-screen image work, and whatever other stuff that comes to mind), it's a seven-inch, 800x480 chunk of real estate you can park pretty much anywhere the cable will reach. Both models offer portrait and landscape layout, depending on your space and display predilections.

One of the biggest and most interesting selling points for it is the USB-only interface, which means that folks already using multi-display setups can integrate one with their desktop, and people who only have a single DVI or VGA output can do likewise. It's advertized as a three-step, five-minute install, compatible with OSX and both 32 and 64 bit flavors of Windows.