By Merle Nicholson, Tampa PC Users Group
merle@merlenicholson.com

I’ve been using two monitors for several months, enough time to do a couple of major programming projects and a couple of minor ones to figure out how they work and what they’re useful for.

Here’s a picture of my sloppy computer table showing my most recent configuration. It uses a new Samsung 17” LCD on the left and a MAG 18” LCD on the right, both using 1280x1024 resolution. 1280x1024 is the “native” resolution of both monitors. “Native 1280x1024” means that the monitors have exactly that number of pixels physically built into the screen.

I’ve been doing a slow upgrade of my computer over the last year, starting with the MAG monitor, a Jetway motherboard, capable of AMD 3.2G Barton CPU and Serial ATA hard drive. My eventual goal was for two large monitors, 3.2G CPU, 80G SATA hard drive.

My previous system had on-board video which was unsuitable for that. I had a kind of surplus 15” LCD monitor that my wife gave me after I bought her a new 17” Samsung last Thanksgiving. I finally got it all together after buying a “made with ATI” video card that has three outputs, VGA, S-Video (TV) and a DVI connector, and built-in capability for two monitors.

So I used the MAG at 1280x1024, and the 15” LCD at 1024x768 for a couple of months, and decided it was a real aid to my programming productivity. So I waited for sales and found the Samsung for $369 on-line at Buy.com, free shipping, no sales tax. Patience pays off, for sure. Notice that there’s a significant difference in physical size between a 17” and an 18”.

In the photo, I have this article going in the left screen (the primary screen) and Office Online on the right as a reference. No switching from task to task, just move the mouse pointer from one to the other to manipulate the windows.

Using Access, I usually have the code window on the right and the forms on the left with the help on the left also. The code window is where you program in VBA and again, you need to have the help up and visible whenever you’re programming.

I typically have reference screens on the right. You can’t program anything without references and help screens, and switching from one to the other on a single screen really slows you down. For a couple of years, I’d experimented with multiple desktops. But I found that just more trouble that it was worth.

The physical setup is simple. The video card has a VGA connector for the primary display. I used a DVI-to-VGA adapter ($6) to adapt the DVI connector for the secondary display. If I’d bought an LCD with digital input, I could have used it directly, with no adapter. But monitors with DVI cost much more.

The software needed comes with the card, and also two monitor support is native to XP. All that it now takes is the settings. Notice in the settings panel (Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings tab) that a secondary screen appears as 2. And the “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor” checkbox is checked. I frequently un-check this when I don’t want the right-hand monitor on; then Apply or Ok, and the monitor automatically goes blank.

You may ask, why not just turn the monitor’s power off when you don’t need it? The answer is that then some things may get accidentally lost on the right side, because the computer really doesn’t know the monitor is physically turned off. With everything on, my screen size is actually 2560x1024. If I disable the right screen in Display properties, it reverts to 1280x1024.

All in all I find my programming productivity is way up. I don’t have time lost going back and forth between Help and the code windows. Also sometimes it’s just convenient to have more screen to say run my TV card on the right side when there’s something on TV that I can’t miss, and also have a deadline to meet on a project. That’s rare, I’ll admit. More often I’ll use the web browser to do internet searches for programming solutions in Google Groups.

As an aside, if you have an LCD screen you may want to try ClearType to improve the clarity of your text on-screen. It really improved mine – dramatically. But don’t be surprised if it’s worse. Here’s how you do that:

Go to Start, Control Panel, Display, Appearance tab, Effects button. Select the “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” check box, and select “ClearType” in the drop-down box, then Ok, Ok.

Look at the results, and undo it if your fonts are not improved. u