Call me old-school, but I'm still a Matrox fan. Yeah, I know, most people say, "Matrox? Didn't they go out of business already?" Well, no, they haven't. In fact, for the market they serve, they're still doing some really cool things. I just hope that market is bigger than, um, just me. ;)
The latest news from Matrox is their Millennium G550 PCIe graphics card, a universally compatible 1x PCI Express graphics card with Dualhead support. Even better, Matrox finally released an official open-source Linux driver earlier this year for all of their recent cards, including this new one. Anyone see a niche market here? :)
I'm currently using a Matrox Parhelia that I bought 3 years ago, and it's still performing admirably. I love the triple-head capability, and the Matrox drivers are awesome for 2D. I don't think I've ever even tried to engage the 3D capabilities... oh wait, maybe I ran the aquarium demo program when I first got it... in any event, it does everything I need, DirectX 9.0c and 3D rendering be darned.
To make this at least a bit relevant, I think part of the reason I like Matrox so much is that they serve a small but important niche market, much like BitWise. Matrox isn't mainstream (I bet there's not a single gamer out there with a Matrox is his/her computer), and neither is BitWise, but that's OK. Success isn't always about being the biggest, or even the "best" for everyone (because how does one define "best?"). Besides, look where pursuing "biggest" and "best" got some of our competitors. I sure don't want to use them. ;)
I hope everyone had a great weekend!