Macbook Pro 13" (Mid 2009) with two monitors

Discontinued Products UGA-2K-A
1

Hello,

I’m planing to buy one of your famous UGA-2K-A adapters for the following setup:

  • Macbook Pro 13" (Mid 2009, MacbookPro 5,5 with the nVidia 9400M)
  • Use the Mini DisplayPort for my 1920x1080 Display (DVI)
  • Use your USB adapter for a second Display running at 1920x1080 (DVI)

My Macbook Pro stands with a closed lid in a HengeDock (www.hengedocks.com)).

Will this configuration run properly? I’d need the taskbar in only one display (not spread over both).

Use: Development related tasks

Thanks for your response,
Cheers

2

I have this same 13" MacBook Pro (Mid 2009; 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo; 8 GB 1067 DDR3 RAM; NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB graphics).

I currently use a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to a 23" Dell SP2309W (2048 x 1152), which works great. I would love to add a second external monitor and just wanted to see if this adapter would still work with all of the updates to OS X and relevant firmware since then?

Is there USB to HDMI adapter? (Is there any advantage to DVI vs. HDMI?)

Thanks very much.

3

Hi Mark,

Thank you for contacting us.

The UGA-2K-A support resolutions up to 2048 x 1152. It comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter should you need it. We also have a USB 3.0 to HDMI adapter that would work on your Macbook Pro (with USB 2.0), but the main advantage is HDMI audio over USB, but this is unfortunately not supported in OS X.

So I would recommend the UGA-2K-A. The Mac drivers have improved considerably, as has OS X support for them, but there are still a few issues, mainly with hardware acceleration that will prevent certain programs (like games or Flash applications) from working well on the second screen. You can see more about it here: http://www.displaylink.com/support/ti…. You can download the latest drivers from here: http://www.displaylink.com/support/ma….

If you buy the adapter, and are not satisfied with it for any reason, you can always return it through Amazon’s 30-day return policy.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to contact us at any time if you have any other questions.

David

4

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for the question and for giving all the details so we can confirm!

Yes, this is a good configuration with no special compatibility issues on that MBP. For development related tasks, the performance will be good on the Core 2 Duo. (And that Hengedock is really cool looking!)

A little more background:

The 13" MBP with nVidia 9400M GPU does not have switching Intel/nVidia graphics that is the main hazard with particular Mac hardware (and is only on the more recent 15/17" MBPs). So you’re good to go in terms of the Mac system. Some newer MBPs also need to have Apple’s latest firmware fixes to make external displays work well together, but I don’t think that’s a problem on your era of MBP.

Things to look out for:

  1. Make sure to use the latest DisplayLink Mac drivers, which is currently 1.6b3 http://displaylink.com/support/mac_do…
  2. Keep the OS X taskbar on one of your non-USB displays (because USB displays may come/go, and that has been known to cause problems).

And just generally, the DisplayLink drivers on Mac are beta quality relative to the Windows drivers. And because USB graphics doesn’t have explicit OS support, the drivers have to do a lot of tricks to get the OS to think there’s extra graphics outputs (that’s true on Windows, too) – so be cautious about OS updates until they’re confirmed compatible and/or drivers have a chance to catch up.

Thanks so much for your question! And feel free to let us know here if everything goes as expected, once you’re up and running.

Thank you!
Bernie