Dual-Monitor Setup for Increased Productivity

With the decline in monitors it is becoming increasingly popular to have a dual-monitor setup. It is possible to have your monitors, side-by-side or one above the other or you can also do a not so standard set where you have your monitors scattered on your desk and in the office or room that you are using.

Often times to is better than one especially if your monitor is 17 inches or 19 inches or another size that is not quite that large. In addition people have now had computers for quite some time so often times they will purchase a new system or purchase an additional machine. This creates the possibility of a monitor just sitting in the basement or closet collecting dust or you having to find a way to get rid of it. With dual monitors, you can have your single computer share multiple screens, allowing you to be more productive and also be able to see more on the screens at the same time.

A lot of people see dual-monitor setups and think that they need to have a strong understanding of the technical know-how's of how to set up the system. This is often times, not the case. Many video cards in a desktop computer will have a VGA port and a DVI port. I have not seen any video cards that have a set up with two VGA ports or two DVI ports. The DVI port is usually right next to the VGA port, and is slightly bigger and is typically white. It is located on the video card in the back of the tower or on the back if you're using a laptop.

Recently I had an experience setting up a dual-monitor setup. My Geforce graphics card had a VGA and the DVI port. The graphics card came with a separate VGA to DVI converter. If you do not have one of these you will likely need to buy one if you have a similar video card set up. You will also need to purchase a male to male VGA Monitor extension cord. I would recommend a length of 5 feet ranging to 10 feet, unless you plan on having your monitor be extremely close or very far away from the desk that it will be on.

If you do not have a video card in your desktop that has multiple ports, you can consider getting an upgrade to a card that does. You will then want to select either a AGP or PCI video card depending on your system's tower. If you do not have the money or feel like purchasing a video card, you can also use a spare laptop or the laptop you own to be the monitor in addition to the monitor that you use for the desktop.

Once you have the monitor set up, you'll want to restart the machine. This will help prevent any hardware interference with the software. Next you'll want to go into the control panel and click on the display. Next click on the settings tab, and you'll see the option for the multiple monitors. If your monitors are set up side by side in a horizontal fashion, you will not likely need to make any changes except if you want to change one of the monitors to be the primary. If the monitors are set up one above the other in a vertical fashion you will need to drag one of the monitors above or below the other. You can click on the identified tab. If you are not sure which monitor is a one or two as the computer displays. You can also adjust the screen resolution so that you can have different resolutions on different monitors. I recommend if you're using a horizontal set up to have the same monitor type next to each other, with the same resolution.

Dual-monitor displays can increase your productivity by allowing you to have multiple programs open and running and visible to you on the multiple displays. If you find yourself on the computer a lot for your job or in your free time it would be a worthy investment to use dual monitors.