nibby
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connecting two screens to a laptop
Hi,
a colleague wants to connect his Dell laptop to two external monitors and view three different images on them i.e. word, excel and powerpoint documents. He has the laptop and one external screen working but needs to know if he can add another screen? I
a colleague wants to connect his Dell laptop to two external monitors and view three different images on them i.e. word, excel and powerpoint documents. He has the laptop and one external screen working but needs to know if he can add another screen? I
You can only do that if you have a docking station with an external video card, or an internal card that supports multiple monitors (ie, has multiple outputs). Most laptops don't have that functionality built in.
Hlarse: Interesting. I've never seen that before.
He can not do this even if he connect two monitors he can use extended desktop feature but the two different screens he can see are simply one screen extended on a a large space, using three screens is not possible and viewing three screens at the same time with a laptop is not possible too under normal circumstances
Again, I've never done this, but to me it looks intriguing. I hate to disagree with Dr-4N, but Tom's Hardware clearly shows the capability of having three separate displays in the display options (http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/08/add_a_monitor_using_usb/page4.html). I don't think a blanket "can't be done" will cover this. I'd read through Tom's review carefully, there are some caveats such as reduced display response time due to the USB connection and making sure that your existing hardware is compatible. However, at $100 (actually I found something for about half that price, after all, Tom's review is dated 2005) it might be worth a shot. I don't think I'd use it as a gaming platform, but maybe for just normal business apps...
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dr-4n: Actually, with nvidia cards, you can configure multiple monitors and a virtual desktop, such that you can have your different applications on different monitors. There are people in my office that have docking stations (for dell laptops) with dual graphics cards, with 2 separate monitors attached.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/08/add_a_monitor_using_usb/