Dual display

[Mrvile]

Hey guys, an associate of mine just got a 17 inch Samsung LCD for 180 bucks new, so he's running dual display right now and tells me it rox and should be the next upgrade I get for my comp. Anyway I've been dwelling on the idea for a while and figure I could use another monitor primarily to keep an eye on my desktop (mainly AIM) while gaming because Steam's friends thing never works and I hate physically calling a friend when we CS.

I have a few old VGA monitors lying around the house that maybe I could experiment with (my 6800GT has a DVI and a VGA slot) and I know there are quite a few different configurations that people can do with multiple monitors (dual display, multiple monitors, wow I'm full of alliterations today) from having one long desktop spanning across the screens to having two seperate desktops. I need the latter, one where I can have my CS up and one with my desktop.

How hard is this to do? I don't want to do anything too complicated and I figure all I need to do is to plug my other monitor in and configure it through NV's desktop tool that comes with the drivers and whatnot.

Also, I'm looking for a good deal on another 17in CRT. It needs to be good (ie good name) but mainly cheap, as in less than 100 bucks.

Thanks! Feedback with all dual-display experience greatly appreciated!

 

[modedepe]

It's very easy to setup dual monitors in any of the arrangements. However, in some games, I found that I could easily control the extra desktop while in a game. In other games though, the second monitor would go black. I don't know if there is a way to change it from going black or not, and I didn't experiment (I'm not running dual monitors anymore).