Using Two Monitors to Increase Your Productivity

Investing in another flat screen monitor can increase your productivity:

• You can have more than one window open full sized at the same time because you have double the amount of desktop space to spread things out. This makes previewing a document and editing the document a snap.
• Imagine being able to editor photos by having one monitor displaying the before and the other monitor displaying the after editing result.
• You can multi-task by monitoring your email and surfing the web.

What hardware do you need besides the additional monitor? You need a video card that can send your display to two monitor.

• If you have a laptop, does your laptop have an additional video monitor connection. Consult your users' manual. If it doesn't, you cannot display to more than one monitor.
• If you have a desktop, trace where your current monitor plugs into your computer. Is there an additional connection? Usually, if your video card supports displaying to more than one monitor, there will be the familiar VGA plug and a DVI plug. Most older monitors used a VGA plug. If the second monitor you want to connect has a VGA plug, you can buy a adapter to convert the VGA plug into a DVI allowing you to use both video monitor connections.
• If you only have one VGA connection on your video card, you can buy for $50 another video card that will have both connections on it.

Click on this link for a step by step description of connecting two monitors:  
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/organization/twomonitors.aspx