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November 13th, 2007 04:00

How do I connect 2 x External Monitors to a Laptop?

I'm trying to attach 2 plug and play monitors to my laptop. It seems to be easy to attach 1 external monitor but once you try to attach 2 it's a whole new ball game.

A VGA splitter can only do what I've already done - attach 1 separate monitor. There's a product called MaxiVista, but this requires an external harddrive with the monitor.

I'm trying to achieve extended desktop either - across the 2 plug and play monitors, or ideally, across all 3.

I'm running an IBM R52 Thinkpad Laptop (Windows XP) (Has 1 VGA port, also 1 of the older 25 pin serial ports)
Video Card - Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset
(perhaps I need NVidia or GeForce?)

Docking station IBM Thinkpad - (Has 1 DVI and 1 VGA port) - currently attached and in use.
Lenovo 19" Monitor - (Has 1 VGA and 1 DVI port)
Samsung 19" Monitor - (Has 1 VGA and 1 DVI port)

Currently I have the Lenovo Monitor attached to the laptop as 1 extended desktop using the VGA port. I'd like to also be able to connect the Samsung for further extension.

The instruction manual that comes with the Samsung monitor suggests that extended desktop can be set up with 1 monitor using the analog input and the other using the digital, but I've attempted this and the video card doesn't seem to recognise the extra monitor. The Intel Chipset supports dual independent display (but I guess not necessarily triple?)

A friend suggested that Dell has some kind of adapter that may be available to create the above environment? Any advice would be awesome!

Cheers,
Miinxi

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87.5K Posts

November 13th, 2007 09:00

You need a docking station with an additional video card to drive two external monitors.

932 Posts

November 14th, 2007 17:00

Matrox Double or Triple Head to Go, if your system video can support enough pixels.  What you do is set your display properties to 4320 x 900 and let the Matrox device split the output to three monitors at 1440 x 900.  Alternately, set up two monitors in your laptop (one for the display and one for output) and split the output to two monitors.  The problem is integrated video won't be able to draw enough pixels to cover three screens worth of real estate, probably.
 
I haven't seen any nVidia Quadro's for laptops yet, but that could someday be an option.  Check the business side.
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