Dual Monitors
The New York Times cannot stop singing praises about dual monitors which is very attainable with the help of two video cards or an upgraded card with two outputs.
What are Dual Monitors?
In a general manner, dual monitors refer to the use of multiple physical display devices like multiple monitors, televisions or projectors which helps increase the area that is available to computer programs that are running on a single computer system.
The additional monitors can be treated as the extensions of the desktop or as mirrors of the central display. These arrangements can be configured via the properties tab in the window display dialog tax. Also, as the additional monitors are powered by networked cables, the monitors can be located wherever the network is available.
The Macintosh operating system is known to handle the dual monitor scenario better than Windows. Setting wallpapers is a very simple process in Mac while Windows cannot set images on a per screen basis by default.
As per the results of a survey conducted with users who have had the experience of working on dual monitors said that they would prefer 2 smaller monitors in the dual monitor mode over a single larger monitor. The survey also went on to indicate that the users found using the dual monitors most beneficial when the application used palettes or when 2 or more windows has to be opened for programming and debugging.
Setup
The main reason that the computers are becoming cheaper by the day is because the monitors are becoming cheaper. The process of setting up dual monitors is rather simple:
- Boot your computer in the safe mode and ensure that you have one video monitor and monitor showing in the device manager. If there are multiple entries, then all extra entries have to be deleted.
- Open up your system and install the video card in the appropriate slot. Connect it to the monitor. Close the system.
- Restart the computer. Everything should work as usual and the second monitor will not show anything.
- Install the drivers for the second video card. This is a very simple process and you just have to follow the steps provided by the wizard. Verify if the drivers have been installed correctly via the device manager and the display adapter is detected in the right manner.
- Open the 'Display Properties' window. The settings tab will display a big black box with '1' displayed on it. There will be a small black-grey box next to it that will display '2'.
- Click on the small black-grey box and set the desktop resolution and the color depth. Next, check the checkbox at the bottom of the tab which reads 'Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor' to enable the second monitor. After applying the changes, the small grey-black box will now resemble will the big black box which has '1' marked on it.
- The second monitor will now behave as the extension of the first monitor.
- Similar steps have to repeated if you want to add more monitors to your system.
Unfortunately, even with so many advantages, there are a few disadvantages. The main disadvantage of using dual monitors is that the resources of the video card are halved the instant the second display device is connected. The processing power which has decreased considerably leads to performances that can be unacceptable on both the devices. There are a couple of ways to resolve this issue considerably like using an additional video adapter or using a more powerful graphics card.
Another prominent disadvantage of dual monitors is seen when full screen software are used as most of these applications make use of the absolute edge of the display device to control view movement.
Finally...
To truly enjoy the advantage of dual monitors, ensure that you are using LCD monitors and not CRT monitor. I agree that the LCD monitors cost a little more than the CRT monitors but the space consumed by CRT monitors is very high and clutters the desk leaving no space for anything. However, LCD monitor give the impression of a large monitor, permitting more flexibility with the layout and allows you to use the advantages and experience of dual monitors to the maximum.
