My 18 month old HP Pavilion laptop (Z2000) has an external VGA port that can be set up as either a mirror display for the primary panel, or for independent dual monitor display for disparate display purposes. The main LCD panel has a max resolution of 1024 x 768, but the external port if configured as an independent 2nd display dual monitor (non-mirrored) can go to 1280 x 1024. This is fairly typical of laptops with external VGA ports over the past 2-3 years, depending on the manufacturer and model. I normally use my 2nd laptop VGA port for independent display purposes with either an external 19" LCD monitor when visiting my parents (and setting up shop at their place), or with my BenQ DLP projector for presentation purposes. It does a great job for me, very nice feature.
I have seen a device at CompUSA that will create a dual monitor output port via a USB connection (v-2.0 USB port I am certain), and is meant for use with laptops primarily. I did not pay much attention to it, other than a passing thought re: how slow it must be compared to a regular PCI or AGP video card. Then again, a slow 2nd monitor is better than no 2nd monitor at all. I have a few dual-head adapters on my tower PCs. They are simply video cards with 2 separate output ports, one port per monitor. Often one is a standard 15 pin VGA port, and the other is a Digital port. The digital port is easy enough to convert to a standard VGA 15 pin output via a Digital-to-VGA converter. I had to do that with every one of my dual-head VGA cards. I had tried using two separate video cards in my workstation PCs at first, one in a PCI slot, the other in a AGP slot. They worked almost well enough, but I would run into apparent driver conflicts, even if the brands were the same. I finally opted to simply go with single AGP slot video cards with dual ports (dual-head). Everything has been great since then. I went with 256 - 512 Mg cards, nothing smaller than 256Mg (128Mg per head/port). Note, however, I do not do any gaming. If you do gaming, or need really fast performance, you are going to pay through a bloody nose for high performance dual-head video cards. As an aside, I have used both nVidea and Radeon technology based cards. Both work well for my purposes. Finally, for some really nice control of the dual monitors I licensed UltraMon, which allows home users to use a single license for use with multiple PCs. I am able to get some really nice display options beyond those that Windows provides. It was inexpensive to license, and well worth the investment at twice the price (or more). Good Luck! Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Paul Newton > Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 4:54 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [NF] Dual monitors > > > Hi al > > I know that many of you have the luxury of dual monitor setups and I > believe that these work either (i) using the MB display adapter and a > second adapter or (ii) without the MB display adapter but with a > dual-head adapter ? > > Can anybody tell me whether it is possible to achieve a simlar setup > with a laptop, using the built-in screen and a monitor attached to the > external display port, or will the external display always be the same > as what's on the built-in screen ? > > Paul Newton > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
