Doing The Dual Monitor Thing

by Bryan on 3/8/2003 at 2:21 PM in Technology

After reading Brad's post on working with a dual monitor setup, and after hearing good things about it from my friend Zach (no site at the moment), I decided to give it a whirl. Fortunately I had an extra monitor and video card, so I was able to try out the dual monitor setup without laying out any cash.

I don't have the two monitors situated ideally at the moment, but even so, I don't see how I will be able to not utilize this setup going forward. It just makes sense. So now I am going to look for a new monitor, most likely an LCD. Brad likes his new ViewSonic, and I've heard good things about the Samsung models.

For those of you who have made the switch from CRT to LCD, did you move down in viewable area, stay the same, or go up? If you moved down, are you happy with that decision, or do you wish that you'd have gone with a larger LCD? Are you using a dual monitor setup?

Update: U of Texas Database Hack Splishin' And A Splashin'

Legacy Comments

I'm not following, I always thought that you needed to have a dual-head video card. From your post I gather that you just need a second video card and the obveous second monitor.

Posted by on 3/8/2003 6:52:30 PM

That's correct, I simply added a second video card.

Posted by on 3/8/2003 11:00:21 PM

I gave it a shot, had two spare s3 Virge Dx cards but XP didn't like either of them (s3 didn't make any drivers for these cards since NT4.00. Yikes!). Shopping time, again.

Posted by on 3/9/2003 4:54:45 PM

LOL, I forgot to mention that one little catch that always exists -- "with a compatible video card"...

Posted by on 3/9/2003 9:07:30 PM

Eh :) Which cards are you using ?

Posted by on 3/9/2003 10:03:48 PM

Let's see...there's an NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS card and an old Matrox Graphics Millennium G200 SD PCI card (this card is 3-4 years old). XP recognized the Matrox card immediately, and I was then able to go to the Display Properties dialog --> Settings tab and configure everything.

Posted by on 3/10/2003 9:00:11 AM