Drivers For Toshiba PA3923U-2LC3

[Mobile Manager]

I just purchased this monitor from Amazon and hopefully it will arrive tomorrow right before I have to head out on a business trip.

One of the reviewers on Amazon suggesting using drivers from Display Link instead of the ones that come on the CD from Toshiba.

I have not heard of Display Link before, but I certainly want the best performance out of this new Toshiba USB monitor, so I found the drivers here that he is referring to, but I would like to know more about Display Link as well as the proper procedure for installing these drivers if I choose to do so.

So please, someone explain the relationship between Display Link and Toshiba and why Display Link seems to have drivers that are 7 months newer than what Toshiba offers.

I will be installing these drivers on my corporate laptop. I just started with this company a month ago and they were reluctant to give me administrator rights, but did so. So, I want to make sure I do not screw up this laptop by installing something I shouldn't.

Thanks

[Wim]

Hi

I'm not sure if I should answer this, as I work for DisplayLink and therefore have a conflict of interest, but will try to explain. :-)

DisplayLink make chips and host software to connect displays over USB. We don't actually make any products ourselves, as our business is to sell chips to customers to make products, eg Toshiba. When Toshiba buy our chips and make the product, they take our latest software release, test it with their laptops to make sure it works and then ship the product.

DisplayLink tends to create a new major release of software every 3 months (or thereabouts). The main changes are bug fixes for compatibility with primary graphics cards, performance increases and features. However our customers do not want to be qualifying a new software release every 3 months, therefore continue to ship the release they qualified originally.

Therefore the latest release on the DisplayLink website should be the most stable release and offer the highest compatibility and performance. I'm not sure what Toshiba are shipping on the CD at the moment (it is probably v5.5 or v5.6, but I would recommend v6.0 M1, which is the latest release on the DisplayLink website.

Thanks

Wim

[Mobile Manager]

That is a great answer. So do I just download the driver from here, install it, reboot, then plug in the Toshiba display for the first time and I'll be all set?

[Wim]

Yep - just download the software from www.displaylink.com/downloads and run. On most systems it doesn't even need a reboot.

Thanks

Wim

[Mobile Manager]

I have been using this for a couple of hours now. Your drivers seem to be working great, thanks! The Toshiba monitor even has a "Display Link certified" sticker right on the lower right hand face of the bezel, so I guess you guys are legit!

A quick question. It is OK to just unplug the USB cable while the computer is on, or is there some procedure that I should follow to disconnect the device?

[Wim]

You can just unplug the USB cable. The PC only writes data to DDR memory in our chip, so its not like a flash drive where you can cause corruption if you unplug while you are using it.

Wim