December 19, 2007

Making One Computer Into 2 - 10 Computers

As you can imagine, I get quite a bit of email from tech companies alerting me to a wide range of technology products. Sometimes I get something that really catches my eye and makes me go, "hmmm".

Well Userful Corporation, based in Canada has a neat utility that lets you use one computer for 2 - 10 users. You might ask, who in the world would needs this?

Think about a reception area, where you have one very powerful computer. Maybe from time to time you get 2 or 3 guests who need access to the Internet or a printer. instead of buying more computers you could use this one computer, setup a few monitors, mice and keyboards and provide the users with a computer.

Computer prices are dropping every week, and they're also getting much smaller, so many of you might not have a need for this kind of technology, but if you are space and budget constrained this "one computer into 2+" option is a pretty good idea.

Userful is also touting its software as being "eco-friendly", since you can save the environment buy not buying two computers when one computer for 3 people will do just fine.

Userful says that attaching 10 monitors, mice and keyboards to a single computer reduces CO2 emissions by up to 15 tons per year per system and reduces electronic waste by up to 80%. Userful recently stated that in the last year their software has saved over 13,250 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of taking 2,300 cars off the road.

In order to use Userful, your computer must have a video card that can support more than one monitor.

You can purchase a basic, four person starter kit from Userful for $200.

For the holidays and to get people to try out the product they're offering their software (the 2 user version) for free - you still have to have a video card that can support 2 users though.

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