I need a new monitor for my home PC. It’s for various hobby and personal uses - web/mail, image editing, maybe occasional programming and CAD. No games. For a budget of around $1200 I could either get two 17" monitors, or a larger monitor (I’m particularly interested in the Samsung 21" with the pivot feature). I had dual monitors at work before and I never thought I’d go back to a single monitor, but the 20" LCD monitors are so big that I’m having second thoughts. Some advantages of the dual monitor I can think of are:
[ul]
[li]Lower cost per unit area[/li][li]Better for editing landscape images (image on one monitor, controls/tools on the other)[/li][li]More natural for working with two documents[/li][/ul]
Advantages of the larger monitor are:
[ul]
[li]Can display one huge document without a gap[/li][li]Less eye & neck movement necessary to see whole display[/li][li]Can display two documents in portrait form side by side[/li][li]Larger than my TV, so I can use it for watching DVDs[/li][/ul]
Anything else?
Real estate on your desktop/working surface. Do you have the room for two monitors?
I should have mentioned that either way, I’m getting LCD monitors. Desk space shouldn’t be a problem.
Besides, my apartment is completely empty right now because I don’t move in until Monday. I don’t own any furniture (at least not on this continent) so I’m free to buy as big a desk as I want. 
I’ve got twin LCDs and I’m never going back. My total work area is nearly 1.7 times bigger than it would be if I had gotten a single giant LCD for what I paid for both of my medium sized ones.
Plus it looks totally rad.
I love having two montors, even for trivial things like composing two emails alongside each other. I think I’d like one large monitor less, even for space-intensive stuff (music typesetting being the main one)
Why do either/or? One humongous and one 15" flatscreener, side by side.
Or one humongous one and two little ones, even better 
Or two humongous ones, right?
Actually a 20" + 15" combination might be within reach, good point. Does Windows work with two unequal resolution monitors?
Different resolutions is no problem whatsoever.
Remember that most 20" LCDs have no greater resolution than 17" LCDs. I think the samsung is different and goes up to 1600x1200 but your still getting significantly less pixel for your dollar. Then again, the pixels are in a much more convenient shape. It all depends on what your going to be using it for.
Games & DVD’s, single big monitor
Programming & word processing & web surfing, two smaller monitors.
I’ve never actually seen a two monitor set-up, much less used one. However, I’ve got a spare 17" CRT sitting around and I’m willing to learn, if it isn’t too hard a task. What is required and can someone direct me to a step-by-step set-up guide?
As far as I know, there are three ways:
[ul]
[li]Install a dual-output (dual head) video card. There are quite a few available.[/li][li]If your motherboard has a built-in video output, use that in addition to an add-on (AGP) video card.[/li][li]Install two video cards. Unfortunately most computers have only one AGP slot, so the second video card needs to be a PCI card. PCI video cards are hard to find and expensive, unless you’re willing to use an older (and less capable) card.[/li][/ul]
Dual-head video cards come with all the drivers and setup programs necessary to enable dual monitor setup. If you choose the other options, Windows should detect and use both. Under “Display Properties” you’ll see two monitors. Not all Windows versions support this though - XP does, but I’m not too sure about others.
I would only caution you that a desktop/office setup for a working monitor is not necessarily a good setup for kicking back and watching movies. I went in kind of an opposite direction – I have a 57" HDTV that I tried using as my computer monitor as well. I gave it up after a few months.
I like watching my TV stretched out on a couch, or in a comfy easy chair. YMMV.
There’s no real issue with a PCI card for the second monitor - anything particularly demanding (ie games) will only run on the primary monitor anyway. As will Windows Media Player in fullscreen - although other players such as DivX are fine on either.
It’s present in Windows 98 onwards. You’ll need to select the second monitor and tick ‘extend my desktop onto this monitor’. You can click and drag the images of the two monitors so it matches the physical arrangement you have.
If you use a second card, it’s best to get one that matches the chipset of the primary one as closely as possible, and AFAIK NVidia run more happily in a multi-card setup.
As far as I know, you just plug 'em in and then set the geometry of their resolution, bit depth, and spatial relationship to each other in the Control Panel. Don’t even need to reboot, the computer should see the new monitor as soon as you hook it up.
you could get 2 of these for ~1200 http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=24-001-143&depa=0
and they’re pretty close to the 21" you were looking at, and they pivot! If I had the money I’d go for it, just one though.
Why stop at two? I’ve got two 17" LCD’s at the office…when I found out they were surplussing 17" CRT’s that’d never been turned on, and that I had a spare VGA plug (dual headed PCI plus the onboard adapter) I figured I’d try it out.
It’s pretty cool looking at one, haveing email and IM in another, and IDS and network status in the third (I’m our Network Security guy.)
Yeah, I had three on my old 7100 (it supported 2 displays out of the box and I snagged a NuBus RGB card on the cheap one day because I had a spare 14" Trinitron gathering dust), it’s not quite as necessary as having that second monitor but it did come in handy a lot.
Can’t do it on my WallStreet (which requires a CardBus card even for the second display) but since I’ll still have this card when I get my next PowerBook, and modern ones support an external (non-mirrored) display out of the box, I’ll have the ability to do three again.
Thanks for all the information—I’ll print this thread, and give it a shot one of these days.
I’ve never even heard of anyone doing this before. Does anyone know of a site with pictures that show the effect?
I’ve set up many of these systems – Windows 98 (and up) supports up to 10 monitors simultaneously, all in native mode. You need a video card output for each monitor. Each monitor can have different resolutions and orientations, but you might run into some driver/proprietary software issues if using various manufacturers cards. Once you have the setup working, be careful of driver updates.
You actually move the monitor images around in the screen properties control to emulate your physical setup. Be aware that your mouse is easy to lose on a large desktop, and if you have different resolutions you may have ‘dead’ corners where the mouse can get stuck.
The best setup I’ve used was dual LCD’s in portrait mode and a single CRT off to the left in landscape mode. Used the left monitor for video’s and the general desktop, used the big square area of the two LCD’s as a work area.
elfkin477, here’s your link. 400+ photos enough?