# Connecting Monitor To Laptop Questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 22, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984 "2013-10-22T23:56:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pauly01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Pauly01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pauly01)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984/1 "2013-10-22T23:56:45Z")
So i had this monitor and connected my laptop to monitor using the blue VGA cable. They also gave me a few other tables that includes a dvi cable. However… is it possible that my laptop can only do VGA and cannot connect it another way? Because i can’t stick the gray dvi cable into my laptop… i dont see a slot like that. My laptop is Asus U45jc-a1 The monitor is Hp Compaq LA2405x Does that mean vga is the only way i can connect this monitor to my laptop? Someone mentioned about dvi to hdmi but can i even do this? Because im not 100 percent sure my HP monitor can do this? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984/2 "2013-10-23T00:27:17Z")
[http://www.computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/asus-u45jc-a1](http://www.computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/asus-u45jc-a1) > [@](#): > > The ports featured on the U45Jc-A1 are the same as on the U30Jc-A1. The left side has VGA and HDMI-out ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks. The right side features an 8x DVD±RW optical drive, a five-format memory-card slot, another USB port, and a Gigabit Ethernet jack. The system has an built-in 802.11b/g/n radio to handle wireless networking but does not feature Bluetooth compatibility. So no, no DVI port, VGA and HDMI only. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2013, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984/3 "2013-10-23T04:48:21Z")
> [@Pauly01](#): > > Someone mentioned about dvi to hdmi but can i even do this? Because im not 100 percent sure my HP monitor can do this? Yes. You can send DVI to HDMI and you can send HDMI to DVI, with the same adaptor, it will work just fine, you don’t get audio when you do this… because DVI doesn’t have audio. HDVI = DVI + digital audio ( well HDMI may exceed DVI specs, but it should be backward compatible.) ; ---
**Author:** ![Pauly01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Pauly01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pauly01)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2013, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984/4 "2013-10-23T21:59:18Z")
I got another thing i want to ask. I connected my laptop to monitor by VGA cable. I cannot do dvi b/c my laptop doesn’t have a dvi port so i would need to purchase an hdmi to dvi cable. Do you there is a possibility that my monitor keep going to sleep… could it be because im using a VGA and not DVI? Because if this could be a possibility, then i would buy the hdmi to dvi cable. But if there is no way that could be the reason, i probably would stick to vga or return the monitor. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2013, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/connecting-monitor-to-laptop-questions/671984/5 "2013-10-24T03:07:53Z")
The cable probably came standard with the monitor.