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Chapter 11: Setting Up Your Desktop

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Getting Along with Your Monitor(s)

Windows can detect and install a driver for a Plug and Play monitor with little effort on your part. In addition, many newer monitors comply with Energy Star power-saving standards, enabling you to choose to have Windows turn off the monitor if you have been inactive for a certain period of time. If you have two or more monitors hooked up to your computer, your desktop can stretch across all of them, and each can have its own settings.

Using Multiple Displays

Windows can handle four screens on a single system, displaying a single desktop that spans all the screens. A pair of 17-inch monitors have considerably more screen area than a single 19-inch monitor and can be a cost-effective alternative to a single larger screen. (On the other hand, you may not have much desk space left after setting up two monitors.)

Windows XP's multiple-monitor support is based on Windows 2000's, and it is more limited than the support in Windows Me/9x. Many monitor cards that worked with Windows Me don't work with Windows XP. Either one monitor stays blank or Windows XP displays the same information on all the monitors. Older display adapters, especially those with S3 chip set, are particularly problematic.

Configuring a second, third, or fourth screen is straightforward once you install the new hardware (you need a display adapter for each screen, unless you use a special adapter). Open the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box, which looks like Figure 11-14 if three display adapters are installed.
[figure]
Figure 11-14: The Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box with three monitors

To configure an additional display, follow these steps:

  1. Click the picture of the new monitor to highlight it. Windows may display a message box about extending the Windows desktop over multiple monitors. Click Yes and OK.
  2. Drag the pictures of the monitors so they agree with the physical arrangement of your screens.
  3. Configure the new display. If possible, configure all the displays to have the same number of colors and the same screen area, to avoid confusion when you move a window from one screen to another.
  4. Click OK. Windows configures the new display.

Once configured, the additional display becomes part of the Windows desktop, and you can drag windows back and forth between the displays. You can even have a single window that spans multiple screens, which can be convenient for looking at spreadsheets with wide rows. If you want to change the color depth or resolution of one of the monitors, click the monitor on the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box, and then change the settings.

Windows considers one of your monitors to be the primary display, which is the monitor on which error messages and alerts appear. Some high-end DirectX graphics applications display correctly only on the primary monitor. If you have one AGP graphics card and one PCI graphics card, the PCI defaults to be the primary display, and the AGP is the secondary display.

caution Windows XP Professional handles dual monitors differently from Windows Me/9x. If you are upgrading from Windows Me or Windows 98, you may need to buy a new display adapter for one or both monitors. Another approach is to switch which monitor is the primary display. Check your computer's documentation for the way to tell its BIOS which monitor is primary.

Adjusting Other Monitor Settings

Depending on the capabilities of your monitor, some other configuration settings are available. When you click the Advanced button on the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box, you see a dialog box with a title based on the type of monitor you use, as shown in Figure 11-15. Settings may include the following:
[figure]
Figure 11-15: The advanced settings for a monitor depend on the monitor's device driver

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