Multiple Monitors REDUX

FROM VISTA NEWS

Multiple Monitors Revisited

Looking back through the archives of VistaNews and our sister publication, WXPnews, I was surprised to see that the last time I did a feature on multiple monitor use was in 2007. Wow, time really does fly when you're having fun! That article, titled Screen Real Estate is the Best Investment addressed the question of which works best: one gigantic monitor or several smaller ones:
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Screen-Real-Estate

Well, even though the cost of big monitors has come down, there are still advantages (both monetary and ergonomic) to using multiples. And a lot has happened on the multi-monitor front in the last few years. I first started using dual monitors on Windows 2000, but getting them to work could be a major hassle. Most video cards had only a single output, so you had to install additional cards. And you needed video cards that were built to serve as secondary monitors - not all of them were back then. Still, once you got it up and running, it was great. Prior to that, it was possible to have dual monitors with NT, but you had to buy an expensive dual head video card. My secondary cards on my Windows 2000 workstation were cheap Diamond Stealths.

Then XP came out, and multiple monitors got much easier to set up. Unlike Windows 2000, XP would recognize your multiple monitors when you installed it, and extending the desktop across two or even more monitors was no problem at all. For a while there, I was running four monitors off three video cards on my XP system. Next, Vista came along - and along with it, an unpleasant surprise. I'd been using an odd combination of cards with XP: an NVidia with two outputs, an ATI and a Matrox. When I installed Vista on the same machine, only two of my monitors would work: the ones connected to the NVidia card. A little research turned up the fact that with Vista, all of your video cards had to use the same driver. That meant you couldn't mix and match cards from different vendors - although you could in some cases use different models from the same vendor. So I went out and bought another NVidia card for that machine. When I got a new Dell XPS, I got two identical ATI cards.

Now the word is out that Windows 7 will have support for multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors. I haven't tested that yet (I'm running 7 on the XPS with three monitors attached to the two ATI cards, on a Media Center PC that's hooked up to the 65 inch Sharp Aquos TV, and on a Sony laptop) but I hope to try it out with different brands of cards in the next few weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.

Installing all these extra cards is well and good, but what if you can't do that? Maybe all of the expansion slots on your computer are full. Maybe you use a "desktop replacement" laptop as your primary/only computer. Maybe you just don't feel comfortable opening up the case and adding a card. Does that mean you can't enjoy the benefits of multiple monitors?

Not necessarily. If your expansion slots are full, examine the video card you do have. Most modern video cards have two outputs. Sometimes there will be one VGA D-sub connector and one DVI, or more often now, two DVIs. Newer high-end cards may have an HDMI connector in addition to, or instead of, one of these. Generally you can connect two monitors to the two ports and have multiple monitor functionality.

With most laptops, you can attach a monitor to the video port and have dual monitors of a sort, with the laptops built-in display serving as one of them. That may not be very satisfying if your laptop is a subcompact with a tiny display, though. Another problem is that many laptops currently in use still have only VGA outputs, so if you have a modern monitor that has only a digital input, you may need an adapter and you won't get the full display quality of which the monitor is capable. Some of the newer laptops include HDMI outputs, though. You can connect HDMI to a monitor with a DVI input, again by means of an adapter.

If your computer's existing video card has only one port, or if you're using a laptop and want two or more full sized monitors, there's still a solution - provided you're willing to spend a few bucks. Matrox, which made those dual head monitors for NT way back when, now makes an external device that you can use to connect two or three monitors to your computer. Called the DualHead2Go and the TripleHead2Go, these little black boxes don't require that you open the case and can be had for both analog and digital monitors. They're a bit pricey, though - the dual head analog model sells for around $170 and the digital model for close to $250.
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-CDW-Products

However you accomplish it, being able to spread out across two or three monitors is great. It's like the difference between working on a 3x8 foot desk or table and working on a TV tray.

There was much discussion, ahead of the release of the Windows 7 PDC pre-beta, concerning multi-monitor support for the Windows taskbar. Apparently Microsoft considered making the taskbar capable of spanning multiple monitors, or putting separate taskbars on each monitor. The current public beta, however, doesn't seem to contain that feature.
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Multi-Monitor-Support

A great little add-on program that I used in XP and Vista, called UltraMon, provided the capability to have taskbars on each monitor, as well as the ability to set a different wallpaper for each monitor. Unfortunately, it's not yet supported on Windows 7. Some folks have gotten it working - sort of - but you lose some functionality. You can read about the trials and tribulations of those who've tried it here:
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Forum

One of the most exciting multiple monitor developments in the last few years was the ability to span multiple monitors with a Remote Desktop connection. I use Remote Desktop a lot, to connect to my primary workstation downstairs from my upstairs office or from my bedroom computer. Previously, you were limited to having the remote desktop on just one screen. Now, I can get a much more realistic working atmosphere by displaying my three-monitor desktop downstairs across all three monitors on the upstairs machine. The default is still to display the remote desktop on a single monitor, however. To span monitors (called continuous resolution mode), you need to type Mstsc /span at the command prompt. Also note that all of the monitors need to be running at the same resolution. To do this from an XP machine to a Vista or Windows 7 computer, you need to install the updated RDC client (6.0) on the XP computer:
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Remote-Desktop

You can read more about Microsoft's official stance on multi-monitor support in Vista here:
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-MultiMonitor

And here is every multiple monitor lover's dream setup: an array consisting of eight 24 inch widescreen displays. At $8000, it's not cheap - but if you can make do with eight 17 inch monitors instead, the price comes down to an almost manageable $2799.
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Cinemassive

Or how about one of those transparent touchscreen monitors like they use in the crime lab on CSI: Miami? Apparently that's a SMART Board interactive display projected onto a clear sheet of glass or plastic. SMART Boards have been used in schools since the early 90s, but you know they're expensive when they won't even tell you the price on their web site.
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Interactive-Whiteboards

Something that sounds a lot like the CSI dream monitor is Microsoft's SecondLight technology, which was presented this last week at TechFest in Redmond. It's a variation on the Surface computer but instead of embedding the images into a tabletop, it projects them onto a piece of plastic suspended in mid-air. You can see a demo video of that here:
http://www.vistanews.com/1JN2DV/090226-Touch-screen

Are you using multiple monitors yet? Does it make you more productive? How many monitors (and what size) would be in your ideal setup? What's on your wish list for multiple monitor support in the next operating system: multiple taskbars? Separate wallpaper configurations? Tell us your experiences and opinions at feedback@vistanews.com