April 16, 1999

About a year ago, my employer decided to upgrade our computer and in the process replaced the monitor. For about three weeks this monitor sat out in the hall in a box and I walked by it every day.

One day my packrat instincts got the best of me, and I asked the boss what the deal was. She said "We're supposed to throw it away." Over my dead body! I brought it home. Sometime later they were throwing away an old industrial toaster-oven, and I noticed the power cord seemed very similar to the one which hangs out of a PC monitor. I rescued that from the trash, too.  

Then Windows 98 came out. Though I had heard about the Multiple Monitor Support, my monitor was no good because it still needed a PCI or AGP graphics card. I know they can be pretty cheap, but so can I. One day a co-worker told me he had upgraded his video card and I asked him (wink wink) what he was going to do with his old one. The next day I brought home a free S3 Virge DX card -- the only thing missing now was a longer monitor interface cable. ARGH. I broke down and went and bought one. I now had all the ingredients -- for $14.99.

If you're experienced at all with rummaging around inside your computer, setting up extra monitors is a piece of cake. I just turned off my computer, stuck in my new card, attached all the cables, and rebooted. Windows 98 flawlessly detected my new setup and after a further restart it initialized my new card and monitor. Now the fun could begin.

When the hardware is all set, it's time to tell Windows what you want. Go to Control Panel and choose Display; alternately you can right-click on the desktop and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. Click on the Settings tab of Display Properties and you'll see that it's changed to show a representation of two (up to NINE if you have that many video cards installed!) monitors.  

Number 1 is called your Primary display and will be the first card found by your computer when it boots up. The secondary display can be configured to any screen resolution and color depth the card supports, independent of the primary's settings. Choose which one you're working with by simply clicking on the picture of the display you want.

For each display other than primary, check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" box, and you're almost set. Click on the picture of a secondary monitor, and drag it to where it most represents how it resides in relation to the primary one. In my case it sits above, so I dragged my number 2 monitor accordingly.

Now...what to do with it? Well, obviously one benefit is the extra real estate. A print screen of my desktop reveals it in all its glory. Desktop shortcuts can be dragged freely between the two displays where they'll stay put. This is a boon to those of us who keep messy desktops. The Taskbar can be dragged and docked to any side of any display. The customizations seem endless, although you can't have different wallpaper on different monitors; it is simply duplicated on all of them.

Each monitor now is capable of displaying just about anything your heart desires. I say "just about anything" because certain applications such as full-screen video and MS-DOS games will only display on the primary monitor.   

Other applications will typically start on the primary monitor but then you can drag the window to a secondary monitor where it's likely they'll stay put the next time you open them. Your mouse pointer travels from one screen to another as if there were no space in between them, an effect that takes a little getting used to. In fact, it kinda gave me a sense of vertigo and I had to go lie down for awhile at first.

Using this ability, you have the luxury of opening a full-screen Word document on one screen, and a full-screen Excel sheet on another -- then you can drag text and data between them with a full view. No switching between obscured windows! 

Or play a game on one screen while doing something "productive" on another! Many times I have Internet Explorer opened full-screen on one while Outlook Express is on the other. I can browse the Web and the newsgroups simultaneously with minimal hassle. There are so many ways to take advantage of multiple displays, in fact, that I can only tell you to spend some time experimenting.

The only technical glitch I have encountered was when I tried to change or upgrade the video drivers for my cards to something other than what comes on the Windows 98 CD. Beware: using the drivers that come with your card on disk or from a download site may render your multiple display setup unworkable. 

Further, not every video card under the sun is supported. In case you have more questions about Windows' multi-monitor support or run into problems, there is a great newsgroup exclusively devoted to the subject here. They helped me out big time with anything I needed.

Whether you go spend some cash or find them in the trash, multiple monitors can add a new dimension to your computing life.

Hello, fellow MSNers. My name is John Katzenberger, but those of you who have been around for the four-plus years of MSN probably know me best as snork. That's snork with a small "s" lest ye forget. 

In “real life,” I'm a 37-year-old Produce Manager for a big grocery chain here in the Denver, Colorado area. 

I do my computing on a home-built Pentium MMX 233 overclocked to 266, 128MB SDRAM with a very gnarled bunch of hoses coming out the back. I currently have a Matrox Millenium II PCI and an S3 Virge DX PCI as my video cards. 

I love my computer; I rarely play games on it because IT is the game.

Visit John's personal Web site here.