2 monitors?

[tattoo cowboy]

i want to hook up 2 monitors to my system so i can put pallets on one and workspace on the other..... how do i do this?

what kind of software/hardware do i need?

any recommendations?

thanx

[AGENT 02]

The best way is to buy a dual-head card. This is a video card that has two monitor outputs and is designed to put the image over 2 monitors seamlessly. The best are the GeForce2 MX dual head (make sure it's a dual - they make a single head MX) and the Matrox 450.

-A02

[deFUNKT]

I run my two monitors on a Matrox Millenium G400 Max.. works really well and they have a good support forum on (www.matrox.com)

On the other hand, I've heard that for 3D apps and games, geforce is better. I do mainly 2D design, so I don't notice that much.. If it's important for you, you might be better off with the geforce..

[mrjellyd]

i work on a g4@work / g3@home and ive two
monitors for both. its great! timeline on monitor 2
everthing else on monitor 1. with a mac its pretty
simple...extra video card in a slot. the monitor setup
in the monitors control panel. its the bees knees.
d.

[eloesstee]

does the mouse just go from one monitor to the other like it's one big screen, or how does that work.

[AGENT 02]

Elo: yup! With a dual-head you have the advantage of the computer treating them as one monitor. For example - it will think of two monitors as 2560 x 1024. You can go the 2 seperate card route as well, but the monitors will be treated as seperate entities, for example, two 1280 x 1024. The mouse will pass from one to the other in both cases.

-A02

[bandwagon]

Just re-iterating whats been said. Matrox xards will work well, and it ends up as though you had one big moniter, with the mouse shifting over via whichsoever edge of the monitor you prefer.

[gurdas]

is it possible to get more than two monitors?

[snoop_doug]

i havent tried out the 2 monitor thang yet, do you recomend buying the extra monitor just for the extra screenspace?

[iCEBERG2000]

I'm on 3 right now since a few days.
I just need one more graphic board and then the third can be hooked to the same omputer.
BUt yeah the extra workspace is so tremendously valuable, you will never go back to one monitor that's for sure.
Basically you can have an AGP graphic board and then have a PCI board hooked up also. Works the same.

iCEBERG

[defuzz]

you say that a single (dual head) card treats the two monitors as one, does this mena if you maximise a progtramme it spreads over both screens? Wouldn't that be a little annoying.
I use two monitors with two graphics cards and I can maximise a different app on each screen. Is that how it works on dual head card?

[eloesstee]

"all this comptuter talk is making me thirsty, i think i'll order a tab"

[AGENT 02]

defuzz: yes, but you'll notice that all th emajor software programs have scaleable work areas too. Simply scale the workspace to fit one monitor - and drag the templates over to the other monitor. Trust me - it rules.

The only downside are Flash websites that go full-screen outside of the browser. It gets annoying then because it forces the site onto both monitors - placing the content split between the two!

-A02

[deFUNKT]

hmm on my system one monitor is one monitor, meaning you can move the mouse between the two and drag pallettes between them, but a program always maximizes to one of the two

[defuzz]

ta agent 2, I think I prefer having two monitors acting as two monitors then I can simply maximise everything and not have to fiddle around with resizing.

I must agree though it is great to have flash maximimised on my left hand big monitor and have the actionscript taking up 90% of the second 17" monitor, I don't know what I will do when I return to using my home PC with its one measley 17" monitor(I am living in Ireland only using work PC, personal PC back in UK in storage)

[NGNIsoftware]

Cool.