Dual Monitors

Benefits of Dual Monitors

I recently purchased a new Gateway system with dual 24-inch flat panel monitors, and it's the coolest. I set both monitors on my desk, side by side, and a bit of Windows magic creates the illusion of a 48-inch screen. I can open a website on one screen, and a word processor on the other, then drag windows from one screen to another. I can even open a spreadsheet and stretch it across the full width of both screens if I want.

It's my opinion that having a larger screen can boost your productivity, because you'll be able to see more without scrolling and alt-tabbing all day long. And studies I've read come to the same conclusion: having a dual monitor in a workplace setting can increase productivity by 20 to 50 percent. If you're a computer programmer, it should be obvious that having your source code on one side and your program on the other side of a dual monitor display would be very helpful. Other areas where a dual monitor setup are helpful include customer service reps, web design, and creation of newsletters or PowerPoint presentations.

Massive Monitor or Multiple Monitors?

If you don't have the cash on hand for a massive monitor, using two or more smaller ones to create an extended desktop can be a much more cost-effective method. Most newer desktop computers have the capacity to support dual monitors right out of the box. If you are able to locate more than one VGA or DVI monitor connection on the external portion of your video card (the part that protrudes from the back of your computer), then you need nothing more than a second inexpensive CRT or LCD monitor. If your current video adapter only supports a single display, you can add a second video card that will support one additional monitor, or replace your current video adapter with a card that has dual monitor support.

There are literally hundreds of video adapters, available from numerous manufacturers, that vary drastically in terms of price and performance. Depending on your individual needs, companies such as ATI and NVIDIA, for example, offer an wide range of adapters that will suit most any budget and performance need.

If you intend to work with a number of graphic-intensive applications, then make sure you buy a card with plenty of VRAM (Video RAM). Also, be sure to consult the manual that came with your computer for installation procedures, and to determine the type of video card it can use. If you have purchased a laptop anytime within the past several years, you will most likely have a separate VGA or DVI connection in addition to the built-in LCD screen. My computer has the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT card with 128 MB of video memory, and it seems to handle multiple windows on my dual monitor configuration without any trouble. The GeForce 7900 is faster (but much pricier), and the ATI Fire GL V3300 Graphics Adapter is another capable dual monitor video card for under US$200. Note that some cards offer one VGA and one DVI port -- you can mix and match monitors if you like. And there are even DVI/VGA adapters to change the connector type on your monitor cable.

Some computers, however, simply lack the capacity for internal hardware upgrades. In these unfortunate cases, there are ways to get around this limitation, such as Matrox Graphics' DualHead2Go, which functions almost identically to a standard video card, yet is actually an external device that makes use of your existing video out port. With DualHead2Go, you can add an additional display to your desktop system or another two monitors to a laptop.

Dual Monitor Setup and Configuration

Once a second monitor has been connected, your system should recognize it after booting up, and with just a handful of steps, you can configure your new desktop environment to your tastes. In Windows XP, your Control Panel's Display properties provide the flexibility needed for extending your screen. On the Settings tab, you can identify which monitor you would like to serve as the primary and which you would like to serve as the secondary display. You can drag the monitors' respective icons to indicate their physical proximity (horizonal or vertical) and check the all-important "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" checkbox. This process is much the same if you are running Apple's Mac OS X, in which case the Displays panel can be opened through the System Preferences, where options to mirror or extend the desktop. The Mac OS, however, has the ability to support several monitors simultaneously with combinations of mirrored and extended screen displays.

Of course, if hardware additions are simply out of the question for one reason or another, you can try a viable software-based alternative. If you have an old PC system or laptop just lying around, then you can easily resuscitate it with a more "virtual" method of adding an additional monitor. The advantage of such software-based solutions is that no additional hardware (aside from a spare computer, of course) is required. For instance, Bartels Media's MaxiVista for Windows allows users to extend their desktop by installing a virtual VGA driver onto their computer, which essentially tells Windows that a second monitor is physically connected to the PC. MaxiVista then sends the information from the driver to a second computer via wireless LAN or Ethernet. The video signal is displayed through a MaxiVista Viewer application that is installed on the secondary system.

MaxiVista's Pro Edition allows users to extend their desktops to an additional three computers (and can also work in tandem with existing dual monitor hardware) to generate screen resolutions of up to an astounding 7,680 x 1,600. In addition, MaxiVista Mirror Pro can, as its name indicates, mirror the screen of a computer to a secondary system.

With a little effort, achieving an impressive amount of screen space as large as or even greater than the largest HD monitors is not so difficult. It might not have the gleam of a shiny new Apple 30-inch HD Cinema display, but it serves the purpose nonetheless. I've become so used to the large amount of screen real estate on my dual monitor system, a single display seems just too small!