Microsoft is developing split screen technology for daily usage

Do you remember old days, when you played Lotus on split screen? For me it was like yesterday, but Lotus isn’t the only game that supported split screen, for a multiplayer experience, in the days when Internet and LAN were only words of wisdom spoken only by a few. Today Microsoft is bringing split screen back, but not for games, as not it is a technology meant to help increase office productivity.

Microsoft thinks that split screen could use environments where access to PCs is limited, or there’s need for a more intimate degree of team collaboration. The moment couldn’t be more perfect, as performance is not an issue, with dual core CPUs, SLI and Crossfire video cards, RAID matrix being in essence doubled components in the same case. So why don’t put an extra mice and keyboard to put those teraflops at use more efficiently.

There’s not much informations about how split screen should work, but we know that we will see two mouse cursors on screen and a vertical delimiter line, to help the two users better visualise their workspace. There is the possibility to move the cursor outside your area, but I don’t see why this is a good thing, as things can get messed up, and users confused very easy, just like in old days. What’s more interesting is the fact that users will login in different sessions, so you have access to your files, even if the account has limited access.

Further more the two users can open up a third workspace, where shared resources can be accessed by both parties. Microsoft promises that the software will be stand alone, so no new operating system install, and also will be easy to use (I believe that, but I don’t know how secure and reliable the system will be).

Source: Discovery News