This is going to be a long and may be confusing post:
Some days I just want to abandon all electronics ... just to go into the wild.
This is how I have been feeling for the last 3 months.
I am an IT tech (networking and such) and could say I am very very tech savvy but there are things I can not fix - my different thinking had made me suffer many times but this time it is out of control.
So 4 months ago I started planning my new desk set up. I wanted a business laptop to carry with me all day that I can dock at night and having 2+ monitors in portrait mode so I can be more productive with browsing and office work. After carefully selecting Lenovo T430 with NVIDIA NVS5400 GPU (it can do 3+1 monitors with a docking station) I ordered 2 ASUS IPS screens.
OMG!!! Are people that design these screens BLIND? The AG coating and its sparkling effect was just killing my eyes - returned. Luckily at the same time Dell released glossy IPS screens so I bough S2340M x2 - very happy with them, my eyes are pleased. Of course it was not that easy since I wanted them in portrait mode and they do not have VESA holes. I fixed that and I now have them in portrait mode, side by side for 2160x1920 resolution. (well, I really wanted 2x 1200x1920 but all that is available is sparkly IPS and one poor build Samsung 850 series so I went with the 1080p).
Although this is a beautiful setup for browsing and office work, sometimes even I do fun stuff on computer. This setup is awful for any firescreen activities - from flash videos, (light) gaming, to viewing pictures - it just does not work. Since I am using Windows 7, there is no horizontal span. So any content that requires full screen I see as a ~13" image on 1 screen (unless its a video made with an iPhone in portrait mode). I needed a solution to display full screen content on both displays as one.
I looked everywhere for a software solution but I only found partial and incontinent one: I can maximize windows to fit both screens with a click of a button (or key combination) with software from NVIDIA called NVIEW (it only comes with NVS, QUADRO and other PRO cards). Then, I found an extension for Google Chrome browser that will do flash videos go full screen on both monitors (its not exactly full screen but it works).
That was not enough though, I need it better method for other applications. So I purchased Matrox Dualhead2Go. On theory it should do exactly what I want - combines 2 monitors so Windows 7 sees them as one. However, as you can guess, that did not work for me either. It turns out that it does not work with monitors in portrait orientation. It has absolutely not control of the individual monitors. You can not flip them or not rotate them.
The bill so far: $1500 for T430; $250 for docking station (it can only do 2 digital monitors max, which was not advertised) ; $350 +$100 for 2 monitors+stand; $200 for the Dualhead2go thing.
I usually don't ask for help as I can handle almost anything but this time I need it. I spend more than 50 hours on this and I went even that far to install Windows XP as virtual box and that does not work either - VB does not support so high resolutions in 3D accelerated mode.
Can someone help me? I need to do horizontal span with Windows 7 or 8 either via software or hardware but it needs to be done through my laptop (I know how to do it otherwise). This feature was there 8 years ago in Windows XP. :'(
Some days I just want to abandon all electronics ... just to go into the wild.
This is how I have been feeling for the last 3 months.
I am an IT tech (networking and such) and could say I am very very tech savvy but there are things I can not fix - my different thinking had made me suffer many times but this time it is out of control.
So 4 months ago I started planning my new desk set up. I wanted a business laptop to carry with me all day that I can dock at night and having 2+ monitors in portrait mode so I can be more productive with browsing and office work. After carefully selecting Lenovo T430 with NVIDIA NVS5400 GPU (it can do 3+1 monitors with a docking station) I ordered 2 ASUS IPS screens.
OMG!!! Are people that design these screens BLIND? The AG coating and its sparkling effect was just killing my eyes - returned. Luckily at the same time Dell released glossy IPS screens so I bough S2340M x2 - very happy with them, my eyes are pleased. Of course it was not that easy since I wanted them in portrait mode and they do not have VESA holes. I fixed that and I now have them in portrait mode, side by side for 2160x1920 resolution. (well, I really wanted 2x 1200x1920 but all that is available is sparkly IPS and one poor build Samsung 850 series so I went with the 1080p).
Although this is a beautiful setup for browsing and office work, sometimes even I do fun stuff on computer. This setup is awful for any firescreen activities - from flash videos, (light) gaming, to viewing pictures - it just does not work. Since I am using Windows 7, there is no horizontal span. So any content that requires full screen I see as a ~13" image on 1 screen (unless its a video made with an iPhone in portrait mode). I needed a solution to display full screen content on both displays as one.
I looked everywhere for a software solution but I only found partial and incontinent one: I can maximize windows to fit both screens with a click of a button (or key combination) with software from NVIDIA called NVIEW (it only comes with NVS, QUADRO and other PRO cards). Then, I found an extension for Google Chrome browser that will do flash videos go full screen on both monitors (its not exactly full screen but it works).
That was not enough though, I need it better method for other applications. So I purchased Matrox Dualhead2Go. On theory it should do exactly what I want - combines 2 monitors so Windows 7 sees them as one. However, as you can guess, that did not work for me either. It turns out that it does not work with monitors in portrait orientation. It has absolutely not control of the individual monitors. You can not flip them or not rotate them.
The bill so far: $1500 for T430; $250 for docking station (it can only do 2 digital monitors max, which was not advertised) ; $350 +$100 for 2 monitors+stand; $200 for the Dualhead2go thing.
I usually don't ask for help as I can handle almost anything but this time I need it. I spend more than 50 hours on this and I went even that far to install Windows XP as virtual box and that does not work either - VB does not support so high resolutions in 3D accelerated mode.
Can someone help me? I need to do horizontal span with Windows 7 or 8 either via software or hardware but it needs to be done through my laptop (I know how to do it otherwise). This feature was there 8 years ago in Windows XP. :'(
Last edited:
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