As someone who uses a dual-monitor setup most of the time, I’ve collected a bit of experience. When I’m at work, my setup of choice is the laptop sitting opened up on a D-View stand with a 21″ CRT next to it. This gives me dual-monitor functionality by using the laptop’s screen as one of the displays. At home it’s pretty near the same, sans the D-View stand. Even when I’m mobile and in a conference room temporarily, I will hunt for a 2nd monitor to set up if I’ll be there more than 30 minutes or so.
So far, I’ve written about how to fix the problem when an application displays on the wrong (or phantom) monitor display. I’ve also penned a tip on how to avoid it in the first place. I’ve given advice on how to find out why an application seems to “hang” if you’re typically running a dual-monitor setup.
Those are all great and good, but what if you want more power?
One handy little application that many people consider a “must have” is Ultramon.
Ultramon does many things that Windows won’t do for you, like controlling which monitor an application should use, perform mirroring for presentations, support multiple displays for screen savers (kiosk-style) and create pre-sets. Probably the most convenient feature is the ability to create and save a DisplayProfile so that you can apply pre-configured scenarios that you run into most commonly.
While ultramon isn’t free, it is worth paying for if you find yourself struggling with the built-in support Windows offers. TweakUI can do some things, but not enough.
I also have a complaint. It involves something I call “Dual Monitor Hell”. It’s a little area of space and time where your mouse gets stuck because there’s no trans-dimensional bridge to magically transport your cursor from one screen to another.
What I want is for THE ENTIRE EDGE of each screen to be able to “catch the cursor” and move it onto the other screen. Instead, however, if you get your mouse up in the corner shown above, it just sticks. I think if you’re at the top of one screen and you move over, you end up at the top of the screen on the other display.
I’ve never quite figured out the whole “dual monitor” thing. Can you tell me what the advantage is? Is it like having two windows open? I’m confused… (what’s new, huh?)
*yawn*
sue, in short, the advantage is more screen real estate, and to be able to see more things at once. Normally with one screen, everthing has to fit together on that screen, and you can bring windows “to the front” or put them “to the back” or minimize them to the taskbar, etc. To someone who doesn’t use many windows simultaneously, this might not seem like a big deal. But I, for example, typically have the following windows open at a minimum, all the time:
- a few email inboxes (unread email, ‘inbox’, personal email, our department’s inbox)
- my calendar
- my task list
- anywhere between 2 and 20 web browsers (tabbed or not)
- a remote desktop console so I can remote control any of my 100 work machines
- anywhere between 2 and 20 IM chat windows (trillian/aim/jabber)
- google desktop sidebar
- Feeddemon for reading RSS feeds
- PuTTY for unix shell access
In addition to that, I might also have Visio, Project, shell windows, phone system reports apps, and countless other things that tie up the screen.
A second display allows for some of those things to still be in the forefront, so to speak, but not require me to have super tiny fonts or window sizes. I can quickly scan left or right to see something update (aim or email for example) without have to actually take the time to change window focus or bring something up from the background.
It’s a multi-tasker’s power tool.
Absurdist, that’s absurd. unless you’re tired and I’ve bored you with my “below your level” technical talk. Which I’m likely to do many times unless I start posting again about Sharepoint. That’s my specialty right there.
Okay, thanks. That was what I thought, but then I never really knew. I feel much smarter now.
Wasn’t “below my level” technical talk. Just commenting on the interest of the blog. And of course, giving you a hard time.
Did you do the stuff on my blog? Dangit Wayne, you are my personal slave. Get with it!!!
Hey, you’re my Avi and I’m your Miss Britt. Except I am not as attractive as Miss Britt.
sue, my pleasure!
Absurdist, no I didn’t get to it yesterday but should have time today. I’m also looking to fix some things on my own blog too, like this horrendous div tag issue with my sidebar, and my tag result page. I also need to change my theme to support tags vs categories.
Mush! Mush!
(And Avi’s way prettier than me)
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/MultiMonTaskbar.html
I use this..free and does about 50-75% of what ultramon does. And it works in vista….
2 monitors are also good (really good) for photo editing….and surfing. One page loads while the other one is read.