So, I’m thinking of replacing my way too old CRT monitor with either a larger LCD/TFT monitor - something like 22" probably, or a pair of 19" monitors, in a dual monitor setup.
Now the larger monitor isn’t really a big mystery, no problems there, but I’d like some input on dual monitors.
Anybody use it? If so, do you recommend it for someone like me, who mostly use the computer for browsing internet, playing games, watching movies, and Open Office?
I have this vision of having Eve Online on one monitor, and something else, like firefox, on the other. Or maybe two instances of Eve, if I decide to really geek out, and get myself a second account.
Also, my graphics card only has one DVI port, so I’ll have to buy either a new graphics card, or something like http://us.kensington.com/html/14499.html
Any info on that?
I have 2 monitors, I love it. If I turn down all the graphic settings, I can easily run two accounts of EQ2. I really don’t know how I ever lived without the second monitor.
So how do you operate dual monitors with a laptop? No, I don’t mean a second monitor with the laptop open. I mean a laptop closed with two external monitors.
I have a 30" Apple display mounted on the wall hooked up to a 24" Apple display in front of my face… dual displays can not be described, they can only be experienced. DO IT.
At home, I’ve got a 21" widescreen LCD, and a 19" regular aspect monitor off to the side. I play MMOs on the main screen, and keep Firefox and other programs running on the other side. It works really well.
Here at work, I have two 22" monitors side-by-side using a shared desktop (I have to use them as one large monitor, due to the way a few of my programs work).
I guess you’d need two monitor connections in the back of the laptop. Not sure if they sell monitor “splitters” but it’d have to be semi-intelligent to be able to determine that you want to run two screens independent of each other. If not, you’d have two screens showing the same thing.
I run a dual setup with a monitor hanging off of my ThinkPad and I lurve it. The Dope on one screen, work/email on the other.
I also run dual monitors. It is great. It is nice to be able to see a reference item on one screen while working on the other. I do highly recommend purchasing the same model monitors or the set up can be weird. I had a CRT and a flat screen and I had to change my desktop set up to fit them on my desk so they were aligned and the same height.
As Shark Sandwich said another major perk - "The Dope on one screen, work/email on the other. "
I used to never think I’d like having more than one monitor. Then, I had a job where I had two monitors–one for work and one for the dope. It was great. Now I have a different job and, I have three monitors and a program called Ultramon. Normally with multiple monitors, you just have a task bar on your primary monitor (where your start menu is), but Ultramon gives me a seperate taskbar for each monitor, so each thing open on a monitor is on the taskbar for that monitor. It is awesome!! It also allows me to set each monitor to a different wallpaper.
I’ve had a dual-monitor setup since 1987, but since I use a Mac, it’s always been trivial to do. I find two monitors to actually be slightly better than one huge screen, since they impose some organization on your virtual desktop. The only thing better than two is three (or four, or…).
I’m running two monitors right now- one 19" LCD that’s a very nice piece of equipment, and one 17" that’s pretty lousy but was completely free. I normally have Firefox, word processing, or a game running on the main screen, and iTunes or a movie or TV show running on the other. It’s wonderful, too, if I’m writing a research paper to have a source displayed on one screen and my paper on the other. Also wonderful to have two Excel documents visible when I’m doing some serious number-crunching.
Setup is pretty hassle free- it took me less than five minutes between plugging the thing in and being done. I definitely recommend it.
When I had my current computer built, I asked for two dual video cards. Right now I have only 2 monitors, but I could expand to 4. I’ll probably eventually go to 3, but I’d need to have a bit of reconstruction done in my office for all 3 to fit on my desk.
It’s great for productivity. I usually have two Word docs open side-by-side on the widescreen monitor, and e-mail/Firefox on the other. Alt+Tab to quickly switch between apps and I’m golden.
I run Oscar’s Multimonitor TaskBar to get a taskbar on the second monitor.
And yeah, once you go to multiple monitors, there’s no going back.
With a laptop dock, it’s usually trivial - the docks I’ve had for Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes have one old-style blue VGA jack and one new-school white DVI jack, and you just plug one monitor into each. Then the fun comes in sorting out which is the primary monitor - newer video drivers will let you flip them around, but older ones may be hard-coded so the VGA is the primary and the DVI is second. Or the other way around. Be prepared to physically swap cables or monitors, but once you’ve set it up, it’ll stay that way.
There are also display splitting devices - these things look like a 2560x1024 or whatever double-wide resolution monitor to your computer, and they just do a 50-50 split to two monitors. One such device that I’m aware of (but have no experience with) is the Matrox Dual Head 2 Go. They’re not cheap - this thing sells for about $200. In comparison, I was able to buy a dock for my new Latitude for ten bucks on eBay and let the laptop’s native hardware run the monitors.
I have the ThinkPad and the dock with the VGA and DVI connectors. You’ve described dual monitors with the laptop closed, but have you ever tried dual monitors AND the laptop screen for a total of three screens? I’d love to get that to work …
As everyone else says the idea is great and it works well. There are, however, some limitations. If you are running the desktop across both screens (taskbar spans the bottom of both) you will have issues when gaming, namely the bezel right down the center of your view. This is a non-issue for things like web browsing where having two monitors really shines. Or you could choose to run your taskbar on one window and just extend the desktop to the 2nd monitor. Games will run on one and the other will just display your desktop (or whatever you have running there). If you really want to do gaming on multiple monitors your best bet is using three…one center and one on either side. This is particularly great for flight sims but would take some extra work (and money) to setup and configure.
Windows can handle up to 10 monitors at a time without special software, the only requirement is a video processor for each monitor. I have 3 video cards in my system, and one of them is a dual-monitor card, so I could run 4 monitors. I like to run 2, but have set up both 3 and 4 systems many times.
Ideally, you’d want identical video cards and monitors, otherwise you may have some issues with driver compatibility. Also, some video cards effectively disable any on-board video processing on your motherboard, so you might not be able to go cheap by adding a simple video card and plugging in another monitor – then again you might. I’d recommend getting at least one high-powered video card, so your system can run any new games that come out.
Be aware that many graphic-intensive games like to take over the entire video processing job from Windows, and don’t expect multiple monitors. This means that sometimes you are limited to a single monitor for the game, or that the game tries to display across multiple monitors with odd results. For general surfing and productivity, though, multiple monitors rock.
