Thanks to Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Spaghetti Wednesday, we’re upgrading Mrs. Devil from a Macbook Pro to an HP Envy. When she’s in the office, the laptop is closed and she has two full-sized monitors connected—one through the Mac’s built-in displayport and the other through a USB external DVI video card. It’s a slightly cumbersome workaround, but it works.
Are things different now that we’re moving to a PC environment (and forward in time)? Does it matter that she’ll have USB 3.0 ports? Since we have a workable solution, we’re not looking to make any substantial extra purchases, but thought to ask if there’s a video equivalent to a USB hub.
As a bonus question, has anyone had experience connecting an Apple Cinema Display to a PC? It looks like it has a standard single-link DVI output, but Apple’s business model prioritizes locking people in to their products so it makes sense to ask first–do I need anything more than a generic DVI-HDMI adapter?
Works pretty well, the only snag we have come across is that you can’t color calibrate the monitors (most people won’t care about this). Only have to plug in a single USB cable when connecting.
What does the new laptop have for display output? Displayport 1.2 supports monitor daisychaining if you’ve got a compatible monitor, and there are hubs if you don’t.
As far as I can tell, the new laptop has just one HDMI output. The monitors are two different brands (Dell, Apple), so I’m not sure daisy chaining will work. The Targus looks good, but at over a hundred bucks does a lot more than we need it to. Are there streamlined display hubs that don’t add in a lot of other features?
It matters a lot what laptop. Almost certainly, you can hook one monitor to the laptop directly and the other to the existing USB video card, if there are windows drivers for it. Better would be if you could hook up without the USB video card, your laptop video chipset (assuming this is brand new) almost certainly supports it, so it is just a question of whether it has the outputs. Most likely would be one HDMI and one Displayport or mini-displayport, if it has multiple connectors.
Apple cinema display is unfortunately not a specific enough model for me to tell. If it runs at 1920x1080 or less, then you can convert HDMI to DVI with a simple converter like you are guessing. If 2560x1440 or more like the newer and larger cinema displays, it probably has a dual link DVI input or a mini-displayport input to support that. While in theory newer HDMI specs support 2560x1440 and higher I’ve never seen an adapter that would turn it into dual link DVI. Mini-displayport to dual link DVI adapters exist but are on the order of 40 or $50 min because they are active components.
Thanks. Laptop isn’t here yet, but it’s an HP ENVY - 17t (L9C21AV). It’s not physically here yet, but looking through its support page it looks like it has just the one HDMI output.
The model of Cinema Display is a bit harder. It’s not on the front, and it’s fairly difficult to move (lots of wires, various things on her desk, etc.). That said, it’s an early generation—probably around 2008 or so. To get into her Mac, we use a DVI-to-miniDisplayPort adapter (I hate to be equivocal, but I’m only 90 percent sure that’s what it is.
Edit. Just took a look under ‘about this Mac’; her current resolution is 1600x1000 32-bit
That laptop is damn near impossible to find any more about. Looking at similar models I think you are right that it is HDMI out only. That said, its existing screen is 1920x1080. I’d probably recommend you simply use the laptop open as one monitor and do HDMI to the second (whichever is better). If you want two external monitors you need to have an external video card via USB like the one you already have though. DVI to HDMI will certainly work at those resolutions though, so no problem there.
Thanks. Contacted support and confirmed it only has the one HDMI output.
We both work with two relatively large monitors on our desks – squashing her down to a 17" screen (and one that is on a lower plane than a regular monitor) is not even worth broaching. Plus, an open laptop is an invitation for a cat to come along and sit.
But in the end, the self-check was worth it. She doesn’t do any gaming or video editing, so the USB video card will do fine. I can rest that part of my brain now that I know that a better/more ‘right’ solution hasn’t come along.
Thanks, that’s something that would never have occurred to me. Most of ours sit in sleep mode when the lid is shut, so it never would have come up. Her current Macbook has never had an issue, but it sits on a dual-fan cooling mat. The new one will sit on it too, so if it’s completely thermal dependent hopefully that’ll avoid any issues. And if it’s still a problem we’ll rearrange her desk/shelves a bit to give her three monitors.
Interesting. I did not know that. I’ve been having some problems–my processor isn’t anywhere near going off, but the integrated GPU seems to throttle it down anyways. But I’ve been running with the lid closed.
I’ll try opening it and seeing if the problem I have where the system suddenly spikes its load when just watching videos disappears.
