[thelist] Monitor

[Glenn Hunt]

Can't stress enough the usefullness of multiple monitors. I run two
Viewsonic Pro 19" monitors from a Matrox G400 Max, soon to be an ATI
Radeon 8500.

Excellent tip - do whatever you can to get more than one monitor.

Glenn Hunt
ghunt at hds.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Paul Cowan
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 5:40 PM
To: 'thelist at lists.evolt.org'
Subject: RE: [thelist] Monitor



> > 2 monitor setups are pretty keen too - one with browser and one with

> > whatever tool you're using to develop.
> 
> Plus 1 from me.

Make that plus 2 then. I find a very useful setup to be (for me,
obviously):

Monitor 1 (good monitor): IE/Mozilla, SQL Server Manager, Terminal
Clients, etc.

Monitor 2 (crap monitor - only 256 colours in my case): Outlook and
Textpad (all code editing done in Textpad).

Of course, the monitor itself isn't that crappy, it's the video card.
Well worth it, anyway, and leads me to a (very long):

<tip type="Dual Monitor Setups" author="Paul Cowan">
Working for a dot-com or other tech company that has shed staff? When
people leave, assuming your company doesn't lease their PC equipment,
steal as many monitors as you can. Choose the biggest, sharpest ones you
can, before anyone else does. Sony monitors, say, will be snapped up
quickly, so get in fast.

Get two monitors (or more, if you're that way inclined), and then try
and find some video card setups that will let you do twin-monitor work.
Dual-head cards like the Matrox ones are ideal, but the company probably
won't have any, and you might have a hard time convincing them to buy
you one. Instead, assuming you have an AGP card, you should be able to
slot a PCI card in as well. But -- be very careful with the card. PCI
cards may need to be the "primary" card in your BIOS. Some BIOSes will
not support this configuration, in which case you might be screwed. Even
more importantly, a lot of REALLY "el cheapo" cards, which are a dime a
dozen, won't work in a multi-monitor setup: I had terrible troubles with
s3 virge-type cards. In the end I got a $A8 ($US4) Cirrus Logic card at
a swap meet -- but it can only do 256 colours. Fine for email and
TextPad though.

Put the PCI card in PCI slot number 1 (closest to CPU, usually). Set up
the BIOS right, boot Windows, and choose "extend my desktop onto this
monitor" (or equivalent). Magnifique!

Finally, be sure to check out http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/
which has an excellent searchable database of compatible configurations
that others have tried, FAQs, etc.

Trust me, it's all worth it, for the envious looks from your co-workers
alone. </tip>

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