If I hook up an extra monitor to my laptop, can I view different things on it?

Question

For example, could I have a window open in my normal laptop monitor, but then have a different window open in the other monitor?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hey there, I know exactly what you are looking for because I do the same thing myself.

When hooking up an external monitor to your laptop you have three choices

1) Use it in place of your laptop screen
2) Display the same thing as your laptop screen
3) Use it as an extended desktop - meaning you could have email open on one screen and Internet explorer on another screen.

Now one way to make the extended desktop happen is as follows

1) Power on your laptop (wthout monitor attached to laptop)
2) Once the laptop is up and working plug your external monitor
into the laptop and power it on
3) On your laptop right click on your desktop and click properties
4) It is going to open up a window on your desktop called "display properties"
5) Click on the "Settings" tab
6) You will now see a screen with a picture of 2 monitors and one of them will be greyed out (it should have a number 2 on the screen)
7) Click on the second monitor once so it is now highlighted
8) You will notice that the check box below saying "Extend my Windows desktop onto the monitor" now becomes available.
9) Click this box and click apply - it will now activate your second monitor with an extended desktop.
10) Now for the cool part, going back to the picture of the 2 monitors, if you click and hold the second monitor, you can drag it around the first monitor so you can properly position the second monitor on your screen to be in the same position as you monitor on your desk. Simply put, if your second monitor is on the left of your laptop then drag the Number 2 picture of the monitor to the left of your laptop and let go.

This will work everytime. Now laptop manufacturers also have built in some cool keyboard shortcuts that do the same things. If you want to know more, let me know by sending me an email at [e-mail] and tell me the make of your laptop and I'll teach you how to be a little more efficient.

Take care

Answer 2

I don't think so. I think the moment you plug in the cable your laptop screen goes blank and everything starts appearing on the monitor. Even if it doesn't I think the monitor will only display whatever the laptop screen displays, I don't think you can have a dual display like that. Kinda like what happens when you plug in a headphone to your speakers.

Check if your video card supports that kind of dual display in the control panel. I've heard of some kind of "buddy" cards which allows two different users to use the same CPU simultaneously using two monitors. For example, while one is checking mails the other is playing a game.

Answer 3

Probably not, it would really depend on the built-in video processor. A quick way to tell is to go to control panel, then display settings. If your video processor is capable of using a second display there will be 2 monitor boxes shown, numbered 1 and 2, with the second one grayed-out. If there is only 1 box then you can only use 1 display at a time.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

No, unfortunately you won't. But it would be great if you could.