What do you use multiple monitors for?

I run a three monitor rig... a 22" widescreen in the center, and a pair of 19" on either side (canted in to have a 'wraparound' effect).

Yes, I multitask

Edit: answering the question, what do I do on those monitors?

Multiple virtual machines, coding (lots of coding) - debugging on one monitor while the app I'm debugging is running on a second monitor while API docs might be up on a third, email, IRC, web browsers, and yes, SL - all at the same time.

I use a 22" and a 21".

Next year i build my uber machine and it will have 4 monitors between 2 cards: 3 monitors on my desk, 1 on a wall mounted pivot arm set to my left. My family has been warned. With 4 monitors i can keep SL on #1, Gimp on #2, Blender & Firefox on #3, Movies & Music capturing/editing/playing + widgets on the #4 wall mounted monitor.

I was a bit premature. The nVidia 9500 was still in the computer but I hadn't installed the drivers for it. Now that I have, I see that there's the potential for 2 monitors. I'll have another go tomorrow but first I have to try and find out how to make things not so big - desktop icons, console windows, this browser (although the forum in the browser is the right text size), stuff like that. According to the card's setting, it's displaying the finest resolution, but things used to be the right size with this monitor on this computer and with this card. I'll have a rummage for what else I can do.

I think your nVidia 9500 will have an old-fashioned analog VGA port and a digital (DVI) port. If you want to connect an non-digital monitor to the digital port you need an adapter. That's what I'm doing now with my two old CRT monitors.

Here's a link to such an adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-F2E4162-DVI-I-Adapter/dp/B000067RL2

There's a program called Multi-Mon that adds some bells and whistles to multiple monitors. http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm

Back when I had nVidia graphics the multiple monitor support worked very nicely. ATI is not so slick but it still works ok.

I'm not logging in to SL as much as I used to, but I used to be logged in to SL on one monitor all the time and run the browser in the other, the browser being focused mainly on forums.secondlife.com, a site you might be familiar with.

I have a 9500GT & 9800GT, both have dual DVI ports. I do have a card from 2006 or so and that one is a dual port with 1 DVI & VGA port on the card.

I run a 19" standard, 20" wide, 22" wide, and 32" wide on my computer, with two graphics cards. Often it's SL on one, forums on another, external IM's on another, and the third I use for everything from YouTube to a second instance of SL, or whatever else I need.

My second monitor is strictly for porn. It's too small on my net-book monitor.

It seemed to me people should have asked what kind of video cards Phil has. He had said:


And he said:

So when he said he had a 9500 I looked it up and I think I misread it as saying one VGA and one DVI based on Phil Phil saying it has "one" in one place and using "a" (a being singular) and that it also has "a wider connector".

So when he said 9500 I looked up 9500, I looked it up but didn't look hard enough.

He added

at some later point.

The 9500GS has or at least can come with one analog and one DVI port:http://www.pacificgeek.com/product.asp?c=221&s=1095&ID=846229&P=F

I having trouble finding specs for a 9500 that isn't a GT or a GS.

I guess it still seems like it would logical to know exactly what video card Phil has.

I just noticed your forum tag Suez - why does Google Chrome stink?

Pep (Derailing a little, but Phil is still sleeping off last nights hangover, so he won't notice.)

Suezanne:

The card is an N9500GT.

It has a D-Sub port (VGA port, I believe), a DVI-I port, and an HDMI port.

It came with an adapter that allows a connector for the D-Sub port to connect to the HDMI port. I just tried that and nothing got through to the monitor.

The computer has on-board graphics and a VGA socket for it, making 2 of them with the one on the card.

Since I installed the card, the Monitor tab in the Display Settings window shows a small grey box/screen, with a "2" in it, at the side of the larger box/screen that has a "1" in it. So it looks like the machine will support a second monitor now.

I haven't had chance to try it yet today because I thought that my router was faulty so I bought another one. Now I think it's something else that's faulty, but it took hours to get both computers connecting to the internet with the new router. Something is wrong somewhere but, as yet, I don't know where.