It depends on how you've set it up (and the support of the graphics card.) Windows does what's often called spanning where you basically have a single display surface the size of both displays. (This is what you described.) Some graphics cards support other modes such as mirroring.Hockey wrote:How does multiple monitor switching work - using a single computer? Is it as simple as moving the mouse until you see it on the other screen?
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- feyd
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19"@1280×1024 displays are the minimum size I would recommend these days for anyone. 2ms is quite good. LG makes good products.
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I was recently tempted to buy a 30" 2540x1680 (or some crazy resolution) Dell monitor when it was on sale for $1100 CAD. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that for what we do (coding, surfing, games, etc...) height is far less valuable than width. My conclusion was that 2 nice 19-24" widescreen monitors, side by side, is preferable to one large panel with the same number of pixels. Cheaper too!
ole: I'd recommend a dual-head ATI or nVidia card and a pair of 19"-24" LCD screens. There are some nice Scepter 22" 1680x1050 panels that have been on sale here recently for $200 CAD (about 90 pounds?) that we purchased at work. I'm personally holding out for a pair of matching 24" 1920x1080 panels (feyd: I have monitor envy!) to replace my old 20" Trinitrons.
Two monitors is essential - you'll never go back to just one, and everyone who sees it will likely be converted as well!
Hockey: Tigerdirect.ca has those monitors I was talking about, and cheap shipping for orders over $200 I think. They sell out fast, but you can subscribe to their deals newsletter or RSS feed if you're interested.
And to answer your question: you just move your mouse off the edge of the first monitor and it appears on the second, as if it's one wide desktop. applications can even be half on one screen and half on the other. If you have a single card with 2 heads it's often performs slightly better, but it's not a big deal.
ole: I'd recommend a dual-head ATI or nVidia card and a pair of 19"-24" LCD screens. There are some nice Scepter 22" 1680x1050 panels that have been on sale here recently for $200 CAD (about 90 pounds?) that we purchased at work. I'm personally holding out for a pair of matching 24" 1920x1080 panels (feyd: I have monitor envy!) to replace my old 20" Trinitrons.
Two monitors is essential - you'll never go back to just one, and everyone who sees it will likely be converted as well!
Hockey: Tigerdirect.ca has those monitors I was talking about, and cheap shipping for orders over $200 I think. They sell out fast, but you can subscribe to their deals newsletter or RSS feed if you're interested.
And to answer your question: you just move your mouse off the edge of the first monitor and it appears on the second, as if it's one wide desktop. applications can even be half on one screen and half on the other. If you have a single card with 2 heads it's often performs slightly better, but it's not a big deal.