Having 2 monitors - will change your life

[mouser]

I don't know why I haven't posted this before.

I know people often yearn for faster cpus, more memory, bigger hard drives, etc.

Nothing has even come close to the increase in enjoyment and efficiency in working with a computer for me than having 2 monitors instead of 1.

Windows handles two monitors perfectly, and it requires no special setup, other than having a video card which can handle it (ati and nvidia have best drivers for it).

If you only have 1 monitor, and you're looking to improve your computer experience, i can't recommend more highly setting up a dual monitor system.  Nothing comes close to it in my mind and i'd rather lose my right arm than go back to a single monitor.

This is even doubly true for anyone who programs, or has certain programs that they tend to run minimized to save desktop space (you can simply leave it running on one screen while you do work on the other).

[dnm]

Agreed.

I just upgraded to two Dell 2100 FP 21" LCD flat panel monitors at the end of last week and I'm loving my new setup. As an unintended side effect, the computer desk is also much less cluttered.

Coincidentally, I came here to the forums just now to post a question regarding dual-monitor setups. Namely, does anyone know of a utility that will extend the Alt-Tab window selection dialog across monitors? I'm using UltraMon <http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/> on the recommendation of a friend, and it seems very useful and neat; among other things it will let you extend a sort of second taskbar to another monitor (sans Start menu, Quick Launch, systray, and other taskbar toolbars) which by default will only have buttons for the apps that are running on that monitor. However, if I Alt-Tab to get to another app (say one behind the maximized one I'm looking at on the second monitor), I have to look back at the primary monitor to see the Alt-Tab dialog. UltraMon itself doesn't seem to do anything with this dialog or with Alt-Tab in general.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[mouser]

there was a recent thread on the forum discussions improved free alt+tab replacements, and i think one said it supported multimonitor - see if you can find that thread and let us know what you find.

as for ultramon - i agree completely, the 2nd taskbar is super useful.  i've not seen a freeware alternative for such an app either, unforunately.

[dnm]

Regarding the Alt-Tab issue, I installed TaskSwitchXP Pro 2.0 today and have been using it. So far, so good. While it won't display its dialog on both monitors at the same time, there is an option to set it to display on the currently active monitor, which seems more like what I want anyway.