Can you somehow use old laptop LCD's as straight monitors?

Factual Questions
1

After a recent pit thread involving a misbehaving HP laptop and a misbehaving HP, I ended up browsing around the eBay laptop parts section.

One thing that I stumbled upon was a set of old laptop LCD’s. A lot of them seemed to be in pretty good condition and cheaper than regular full fleged LCD monitors, especially for the “gently used” ones. They all have some sort of LCD-cable hanging down off of them, and basically, I was wondering if it was somehow possible to take advantage of some multi-monitor capabilities by rigging these old LCD’s up to an already functioning computer or laptop.

So, what’s the relevant Straight Dope?

2

Not unless you’re REALLY good with electronics. Laptop monitors always (?) have proprietary interfaces to them, specific to the manufacturer and chipset. Figuring out how to talk to them is apparently very difficult – I’ve never known of a non-EE who’s successfully made use of them.

There may be exceptions, but this question comes up fairly often in technical forums, and the answer is pretty much always “no.”