Recently I posted a response to a question about how multiple users could use a single computer at the same time. Existing solutions let you plug in two monitors, keyboards, and mice to one PC, but none of them are easy to set up, and if they are, they aren't affordable.

Microsoft's India division has come up with something entirely new: You still plug in two keyboards and mice to one PC, but both users use a single monitor. Each user gets his own OS to play with. (See the screenshot if you're having trouble visualizing this.)

The idea is that this can make things easier for small businesses in developing countries, which don't have the resources to put a computer on every desk. In countries like India, workers often sit and wait for a computer to become available.

But can this work in the States, where the average consumer might want to occasionally share a PC with a friend? For reasons that should be immediately obvious, there don't appear to be any plans to bring this technology to the U.S. However, there's no reason a third party couldn't replicate something like this. In fact, virtualization technologies (like Parallels for the Mac) pretty much do the same thing, though typically they involve a window running a different operating system than the primary one.

Still, I'm not sure I'd want to work on my PC, however briefly, that exceedingly close to another person. But in a pinch...

LINK: Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use