Laptop these days are dead cheap and almost every other guy owns one. It’s almost replacing the desktops in all respects and offers more value than a laptop. It’s as powerful and efficient as a desktop and offers you more which desktops can’t.
If you own a desktop, by now you probably would be using two monitors instead of one, which also happens to increase your productivity. For more info read : Multiple Monitors Increase Productivity. Now those who own a laptop too can use a second monitor in conjunction with their laptops :).
By setting up two monitors you can typically have one application running on the laptop screen and any other application running on the additional second monitor. In addition to the current setup, you will need a few other hardware like dual video card, dual processing card to have the dual monitor feature up and running on your laptop. As I’ve already mentioned above, have dual/multiple monitors definitely increases your productivity, but it’s much harder to get this set up for a laptop when compared to a desktop.
Lets look into the basic essentials to get started:
Find what most laptops have, a VGA port or depending on your laptop it might also be a DYI port, plugin the external monitor to which ever port your laptop has and try to configure the Display Control panel to simultaneously handle both the monitors, side by side. (Just position the boxes labeled 1 and 2 and click “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor.” (See screenshot for detail.) That’s all it takes… It is this simple, provided your laptop’s Video Graphic Acess card supports multiple monitors.
But how will you know if your Graphics Card is geared up to handle such a situation? Technically speaking it should be able to as the Graphic Card Manufacturers do their home work and research and know the dual monitors are in much need. If you have any of the most recent ATI and Nvidia graphics cards, or even the Intel GMA 945G integrated graphics chip you can be assured that your Graphic Cards support Double display. If you have ATI or Nvidia graphics on your laptop, download the latest drivers from either the appropriate website or from your laptop manufacturer’s drivers page. Occasionally you can do a Windows Update for new drivers from Microsoft, but I personally am not a bit fan of Microsoft drivers and I prefer the drivers provided by the manufacturers… who else can know the product better :).
Once you have installed the new driver, follow the steps mentioned above and you should be able to get the dual monitors running. If you still fail to get the two displays to show up, don’t be disheartened as it just means that your PC cannot support dual display. But that’s not the end of the world, there are other ways to get this working.
Every laptop will have PC card slots. There are a number of VGA adapter PC cards available in the market. You can buy one of the best and fix it onto your laptop. These VGA adapters will work as the interface connectors for the second monitor to go up with your laptop. They can be a bit pricey, some cards can even support up to 3 or 4 monitors at the same time, but if you are a tech freak who wants to try out these cool stuff with your PC, go ahead don’t look at the price, just get them and get your lappie fixed.
Other alternatives are USB adapters but, they are no match to the VGA adapters, so I personally will not advice you to go with USB adapters, but if money is the constraint, then you should compromise with the quality and go with USB adapters.