To prove I'm a nerd I have once again entered the world of multiple monitors. It's really easy with this laptop as it has a monitor port on it and by default with XP it's set up to do multiple monitors instead of one or the other.

However, rather than use the monitor that's hooked up to my "file server" computer I pulled out the one I acquired from Mike Roderick and hooked it up. With the laptop in between the two CRT monitors because you can't change the laptop's primary display to a secondary display and I like to have my primary in front of me directly.

Having three keyboards for two comptuers gets a little confusing but i've been keeping a music folder over the laptop's onboard keyboard anyway (I have a USB keyboard I use for the laptop) so I can set things on there without them typing stuff.

I have the wireless keyboard hooked up to the other computer (it's PS/2). I've been using my old MS Opti Explorer mouse with my laptop because I like it better than the Kensington wireless opti mouse (It's got the extra buttons and it fits my hand better) so i've got the wireless opti on the desktop system. You can see them side-by-side in the picture. The keyboard visible in the picture is the wireless one. The monitor by that keyboard is the secondary monitor for the laptop and the monitor near the mouses is the only monitor for my desktop system (which I use mostly to store things and access over the network).

You can also see the corner of my good old Game Theatre XP breakout box (sound card) which I have run the headphone out on my laptop into so I can have better quality sound. (this laptop has sucky sound)

I sure have a mess of cables.

I also have two other functional computers in this room but neither of them are hooked up. One is my grandmother's computer (which she will never learn to use) and the other is the one Mike Roderick gave me before he moved to Boston. I've thought about hooking one up with a KVM switch to one of the monitors and using it as well. I could get another KVM switch and use all four of my comptuers at once.



Since there is a wall directly behind where I sit there is only about four feet from the monitors to that wall so I wasn't able to get a shot with all three monitors in them. If you look semi-close you'll notice where I joined two shots together to form one.

On the desktop monitor is a picture of a yummy coffee drink and the corner of my GTXP control pannel. On the laptop is an image from Digital Blasphemy and my trillian window. On the secondary is the coffeegeek forum (right now it's desktop is the same as the primary).

Firefox does an odd thing with multiple monitors. If you have the browser on the secondary tooltips, the dropdown that has history when you start typing an address and it trys to help you out, and book marks all open on the PRIMARY monitor. Gotta find a fix for that. Also need to get a copy of UltraMon so I can have a proper task bar for each monitor.

I dunno how long this will last as something is arcing inside the secondary monitor.
- posted by Nick @ 6/17/2005 04:04:00 AM | 0 comments