Adding a second display to a Macbook Pro

Factual Questions
1

We have a 15” Macbook Pro 5,4 that’s a couple years old. It has an Apple Cinema Display attached to it, and we’d like to add a second display and extend the desktop (I think that’s the term—we want to be able to move the mouse or windows from monitor to monitor). I assume that since this is a Mac it should be easy.
Hahahaha… no, really.

Mac switched from standard HDMI/DVI outputs to some proprietary Apple socket (does anyone know why or what the advantage is?), so when we first got it we needed an adaptor for the Cinema Display. Now I’m seeing this and this, but am not sure which we’d need. I assume the latter, but hey, Apple; the former is $70 more. The second monitor has VGA and DVI inputs (it’s a basic screen that will hold corrections and data; the Cinema Display is where the design will be done).

That’s assuming the Mac has two video outputs. If not, is there any way to do it? If so, does the Mac have built-in software?

Sorry if this is obvious, but I’ve little experience with Mac hardware and need to do this as quietly and seamlessly as possible (Mrs. Devil likes it when things just magically appear on her desk and her workflow isn’t interrupted at all).

Thanks,

Rhythm

2

It’s a laptop right? So you already have two displays, the one built in and the cinema display. Can’t have more than two displays on a laptop sorry (unless it’s a brand new one with Thunderbolt, then you can daisy chain them and have three including built in display).

The reason they changed to mini displayport adaptor is size, it’s about 1/8th the size of a DVI connector. Lets them make smaller laptops.

And it’s an open standard, licensed freely, not unique to Apple, Dell and Lenovo use it as well.

And yes all macs include the software to do window spanning moving the cursor back and forth etc, plug in the max number of displays supported and it works. Unfortunately your laptop only supports 2 displays and you already have two.

3

Ack. The laptop’s display isn’t used. It sits closed under the main display. Does that make a difference?

4

No it doesn’t help because you only have one external display connector on the laptop.

Your only option is a Matrox DualHead2GO, DVI splitter roughly $150
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/dh2go/

It would be the same limitation on a windows laptop, they pretty much always have only one external display connector.

5

I hope this doesn’t constitute hijacking the thread, but…

Is it possible to hook up a second MacBook to use as a second screen? I’m thinking where two people are working on something and it’s easier to have two screens available than to have the 2nd person peering over the first person’s shoulder.

6

that sounds like a job for screen sharing:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/14065.html

7

Thanks for the help–both saving an enormous amount of frustration as I tried figuring it out for myself, and for a bit of insight into the display adapter.
On Mace’s question. We have a Mini and an older pre-Intel Macbook. Assuming we don’t need either to do any processing (just display), can we use that to run the second monitor? Could we make the desktop wide enough to simulate dual displays?

8

I like that. But I stumbled on the first step:

If I open Finder, there is no “disclosure triangle” and no “Share” in the sidebar.

I don’t have any other computers on my network right now… will those things appear in my Finder window if I do have another computer on the network?

9

If your DisplayPort is already in use, consider adding a USB monitor as a secondary display. Alternately you can buy any of the various USB-to-HDMI/DVI/VGA adapters on the market and connect it to a monitor of your choosing. They’re all based on the same DisplayLink innards which perform surprisingly well given the limited bandwidth of USB 2.0 (I’m using one to compose this response, in fact).

The monitor I linked above is a small 1366x768 panel. If you’re looking for something bigger, AOC just announced a full 22" 1080p USB monitor at CES, but I don’t think it has been released yet.

10

I wasn’t sure if you meant this was a built-in limitation of the Mac OS or if you were just describing the physical limitations of the OP’s current setup, so I tested some of those DisplayLink adapters I mentioned just now on my 2011 Macbook Air. All three monitors (the laptop’s own display + 2 monitors connected via USB) worked without any issues.

11

Ok true, I forgot USB video adaptors, heard bad things about the early ones and never tried them since.

I have used the Matrox DualHead2Go, it’s more expensive but its supports full hardware graphics acceleration of both monitors, not sure if the USB adaptors support that or not.

12

Even the newer USB adapters are pretty limited. There’s a discernible lag with both of the models I’ve seen. For email, word processing or spreadsheet work, the lag is not bothersome at all, but you wouldn’t want to do anything more graphics- or movement-dependent.