Any port in a storm refers to a ship on the high seas. It definitely doesn’t apply to input and output ports on PCs.

Most of the legacy ports have been around so long I’m pretty used to them. Mouse and keyboard (both the PS/2 type ports and the newer USB ports), VGA for the monitor, the fast disappearing parallel printer port, serial port (are there still any serial devices?), audio in and audio out port (and some ports I’ve probably missed).

My Dell Inspiron 530 threw me with another port, a DVI port. There were also two cables for the Dell SE198WFP LCD monitor, a standard VGA cable, and a DVI cable.
DVI is “a digital connector which is the ideal way to connect to an LCD monitor.”
DVI-I (Integrated) can carry both a digital and an analog signal to support VGA monitors, and DVI-D (Digital) provides only a digital signal. DVI was intended to replace VGA.

HDMI is backward compatible with DVI. HDMI carries both digital video and audio signals in a single cable. Most gamers would know about HDMI as the Xbox 360 Premium began shipping with a HDMI port last year.

Over the past few days I’ve been slobbering about the PC World editors’ dream PC — a machine that is valued at about $30,000. (See “Watching TV While You Compute” and “The Magic of the Solid State Disk.”)

Those of you out there who are my groupies (Thanks, Mom!) know that I consider this the era of the display. (See “Era of the Display.”) That means I was especially interested to see how the experts at PC World would want to view their computing activities. That would require three NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXiSV Black 24.1 Widescreen LCD Monitors at a quoted price of $3,866.97 (which is just about the best quoted price on PriceGrabber.com too) and a three-monitor X-Top Scalable Multi-Screen Display System from 9xmedia for another $1,000.

About that brand of monitor, to accommodate three 24-inch displays, you’d think you’d need a desk wide enough to accommodate about 66 inches of screen, since these are just under 21.8 inches in width. But that wouldn’t be true. If you’re working on a troll table, like I do, you could set up that 9xmedia display stand to show the monitors, one on top of the other (in which case you’d want to work near your chiropractor, since your neck will, no doubt, go out on you on a regular basis).

Of course, my troll table probably couldn’t handle the 26 pounds x three displays weight, which tallies to 78 pounds, not counting the display stand.

But, oh, the pleasure of working at a bank of monitors that can show up to 16.7 million colors (from a palette of 69 billion). And they include clocks that lets the user schedule power management schemes in order to reduce energy usage.

So I’d say PC World got it right with this one — even though it would force me to upgrade to, oh, a real desk. Imagine! With the power of these monitors, I could view The Complete Series of The Andy Griffith Show in a third of the time — one episode per screen. Yes, I could get into blowing nearly five grand on displays.

Kids with unique challenges have been on my mind lately. In the course of doing research for an article, I’ve discovered a bunch of products that cater to their special computing needs. (Many of these things are just plain cool too.)

For instance, did you know that you can turn any standard monitor — desktop or notebook — into a touch interactive screen? Keytec, which developed the technology I’m familiar with, MagicTouch, claims the touch screen can be installed and removed easily without opening the computer case to install a board.

It’s activated by touch with almost anything — a finger or stylus, even a gloved hand. It can be used concurrently with your mouse, and it’s available for USB or serial port interface. Drivers are available for versions of Windows from Vista through ME, as well as NT, and Linux and Mac 9 and 10. Plus, the screen helps reduce that static electricity emanating from the monitor. Apparently, it’s easy to move from display to display and can be cleaned easily.

I can think of a user or two — little and big — who could put this thingie to good use.

If you wish you had two monitors on your desk at the same time to handle different functions on each, you’ll want to know about a new kind of technology that will soon be making its appearance — thanks to a little known Korean company called E-Detail. No doubt, the idea will crop up in other products soon. What they appear to specialize in dual displays.

The Multi Web Pad is a tablet PC that offers two displays, one standard sized and the other, well, dinky. The specs are pretty standard for a non-professional PC: an AMD CPU, Windows XP Home Edition (an odd choice for a machine that could easily be used for work), 512K RAM and a built-in webcam.

But having those two monitors built in is a boon. Imagine those situations where you have to crane your neck to see somebody’s display while they talk you through a demo of something at work. This way, they can flip a monitor around for you to watch. Or, if you participate in a project where the team is remote, you can view the webcam showing teammates on the mini-monitor while doing your note-keeping or wiki updating on the other.