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I use UltraMon for this. Some of the features have been adopted by Windows 7 natively that were implemented first in UltraMon via scripts, but specific capabilities like dividing a large desktop into smaller "sub-desktops" with shortcut keys to flip applications between these arbitrary borders and move/maximize them are very helpful, particularly in multi-monitor environments.

This should explain it well enough: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx

Thanks for the intel!

Couple of points:

Span desktop background across all monitors.
Multi-monitor taskbar

About. Damn. Time.

Launch and move Metro style apps to any monitor

I can already move programs from one screen to another. This is nothing new (more a step back, really, since "Metro apps" all default to full screen, thus reducing overall screen real estate)

Show a different desktop background on each monitor.
Multi-monitor slide show.

Okay, now that is a neat feature. Not really the most useful thing in the world, but hey, who said computing was all about productivity? Dickheads, that's who.


So, in other words, Windows 8 integrates all the reasons we love MultiMon and Ultramon into the OS.

As I said before: About. Damn. Time.

The developer can still develop fine with a single monitor. He will just be much slower. http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/18/234899/Multiple-monitors-boost-productivity-by-35.5.htm

    That study says that going from one monitor to three gives a 35% productivity boost. If the cost of the programmer to the company is 100K a year (if you include all overhead, it is probably more than that), then the company will experience a loss of 25K worth of labor by cheaping out and not spending a few hundred bucks on a couple more monitors. Basically, the extra monitors pay for themselves in one week. What business wouldn't want to do this?

      I personally believe so strongly that there is a huge productivity gain from extra screen real estate, that I've had an eight monitor set up for many years now. Here's my first http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/gallery_browse.asp?ID=636&date=desc&nummon=true&mon=desc

    The lower row is what I'm currently working on. The upper row is where I put things that other people would minimize or let other applications cover them. Basically, I never minimize to the taskbar, and I almost never have windows covering other windows. I would say this setup has improved my productivity at least 50%, and made my work much less stressful.

    When I first built an Octomon setup (that's what I call it), it cost about 12 grand. If I were building one today, I would probably go with four 30" monitors (even more pixels than my eight 24" monitors) or eight of the Apple 27" monitors. Either way would be significantly less than what it used to cost for a much better system. There are great video cards out these days that make building these systems a snap (my first one took about two days of fiddling and trying different video cards to make it work).

Get your boss to get some licenses to this:
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

I was an internet at some random software company for 6 months, and it helps when maximizing windows, stupid pop-up boxes appearing everywhere and just helps with sorting windows, even on uneven monitors. I run it myself on a 1680x1050 monitor next to a 1280x1024 monitor, and it really helps with stupid dialog boxes.

I'm currently using a pair of SyncMaster 2443bw monitors. They're both running at native 1920x1200.

People tend to be surprised by my setup, however, because I have the left monitor in landscape orientation, but the right monitor in portrait orientation. I find that some things (such as spreadsheets) look better on a wide display, whereas other things (like web pages) look better on a tall display. It's the best of both worlds - I just click the content over to whichever screen it looks best on. This is especially easy to do with a program like Ultramon.

I use Windows 7 on my work desktop. I have dual monitors. I use UltraMon and get basically the setup requester is looking for: separate desktops that I can drag (or quickly hit the "move to other monitor" button) between screens.

I also use nomachine which tunnels compressed X sessions over SSH to remotely manage Linux servers in far away places and VirtualBox to run local Linux VMs.

It's not that hard to set up.

Running more than two monitors without Ultramon is a bad idea. I've run three monitors since 2005, absolutely love it. If the card handles the monitors and Windows doesn't even know there's more than one, then it may render Ultramon useless.

Actually, if this technology was built into laptops I could ditch my desktop entirely. Everything else can go external. But I know better than to hold my breath waiting for the computer industry to satisfy my needs...

Let me get this straight - you paid $40 for this? Do you know that Ubuntu offers this by default for free, and more? My interface right now looks as if it were controlling a UFO and it travelled from 3,432AD to save Sarah Connor.

Why do certain companies insist on changing making their applications look inconsistent with the rest of the operating system?

The main reason I don't use Chrome (and abhor iTunes) is that Ultramon doesn't work with them. And that makes working with dual monitors painful.

I actually rather like Vista, suprisingly. Yes, even the UAC (it prevents my kids from installing random crap they found online while I'm at work).

However, there is one "feature" of Vista that would have been a deal-breaker for me, had I known about it ahead of time. I *still* haven't seen anyone talking about it publicly. So I'm here to warn you all that if you upgrade to Vista, you will loose multi-monitor span. As a gamer who loves the extra peripheral vision provided by using two monitors, I will *not* go back to one.

For those unfamiliar with multi-monitor setups, I don't want you to get me wrong: Vista supports multiple monitors just fine. However, most games don't. I think there are internal DirectX problems with making objects that have parts on two different display devices at once. "Span" mode is where your video driver internally combines the monitors itself, and presents the OS with what looks like one large monitor. This shows up in nearly every game as one extra wide resolution.

Apparently, allowing users to install device drivers which present the OS with a "virtual" display device like this could potentially allow a digial way around Vista's DRM, so its not allowed. In plain english, you can't play games multi-monitor because of Vista's retarded DRM!

The only way I found around this is with one of these nifty Matrox devices. They are kinda expensive though. The full digital model will run you about $300. The semi-digital two head model is more like $200. So if you are a multi-monitor gamer, plan on adding about $300 to the cost of any planned upgrade that includes Vista.

first one: "improve taskbar for multi-monitor"

Are they just going to buy ultramon (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/) like I did?

If you care, there's a cool mod for XP that'll stretch the bar across both displays called ultramon

Not sure if this has been mentioned on this thread, but I think I recall reading it on \. before:
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/overview/

Ultramon in windows allows you to swap windows from one session to the other without dragging, via a little icon at the top. Very handy.

Considering that most 24" LCDs cost at least as much if not more than a pair of smaller ones, I wonder why they opted for less screen real estate

That is odd. At work we upgraded to dual 19" LCDs a few months ago and I can say there is a huge difference. I *feel* more productive because I spend less time bouncing between windows. I find it especially useful when coding, be it web or applications. You can have your code full on one screen, then the resulting webpage or documentation on the other. I think that a third monitor would be even better, having three full screens for different parts of a project. With one huge monitor you can't arrange windows as easily as you can with smaller monitors where you can just maximize the two or three windows you are working with. (An aside: if you have multiple monitors on Windows, you must try Ultramon. Worth every penny.)

I don't understand why anyone would want a 24" monitor for work. Watching movies maybe, but not the day-to-day stuff. Somebody who just started doing research at the university where I work got dual 24" LCDs with his new $8,000 workstation. For the cost of those two monitors he could have gotten three 20" LCDs, which would have given him more desktop space and (in my opinion) a much more useful setup. He just thought two 24" beasts sitting side by side would look frakking cool. He's right, but I still prefer multiple smaller monitors.

Only if conditions are right. Are they in this case? I don't know for sure, but I am skeptical.

That's a different argument. You can't have it both ways.

Again, you can't say "those aren't important to me" while at the same time using the price to demonstrate how much cheaper it is.

And the are of course other advantages to the Mac that are more difficult to quantify.

Not a full desktop but I found Ultramon to be a great little item. Its also lightweight and non obtrusive, which were two features I found lacking when I tried other desktops out.

Screw virtual, do what I did and buy at least one more monitor! Dual and up monitors rock. Just add Ultramon (Which IMHO is one of the best multimonitor utilities there is going) and you're all set!

* There's (typically) no "maximise across all screens" button.

These two problems can be solved by Ultramon. Actually, you don't get a start menu per monitor (only taskbar) but there is an option for each taskbar to only display items on that one monitor.

I recommend these programs to all my co-workers, friends and family.
BlueFrog - Fight spam with the Blue Community
DefilerPak - Video/Audio Codec Pak
FireFox - IE replacement
Foobar2000 - Audio Player
MyUninstaller - ADD/Remove Programs alternative
Nero - CD/DVD burning software
NOD32 - Very fast and accurate Virus Scanner
Thunderbird - Outlook Express Replacement
Treewalk DNS - Local caching DNS
Trillian - Many IM Clients in One
UltraEdit32 - Best Windows Text Editor (check out column mode)
UltraMon - If you multiple monitors this program is great
Zoomplayer - DVD/Media player

(Windows's Taskbar has a similarly annoying flaw regarding multi-monitor setups). ...it extends the taskbar onto the secondary monitor, along with a host of other things - invaluable for multiple monitors.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

Try This http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/

The definitive source: http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/ There is tons of info there along with a database of proven configurations.

Personally, I recommend a Matrox Parhelia with three flat screens. UT2004 looks great and runs smoothly across all three screens.

Oh, seconded, most definitely. Ultramon r0xors for multi-monitor Windows setups. You can configure it to duplicate the taskbar on both screens, or to show only those applications that are on that screen. It adds options to Shortcut properties, so that apps can be made to open on one specific monitor; adds buttons to the top-right corner of windows to "snap" the window between screens; and is generally very useful.
The homepage is here.
Not affiliated with Realtimesoft, yada yada - just a satisfied Ultramon user!

Their TigerVista Manager software seems to be a rebranded version of UltraMon, a great utility for managing multiple monitors.

...god fucking forbid you want to change settings on one monitor without fucking up the other. Impossible. Change the refresh on one, watch the color depth on the other change. Change the layout, watch the refresh change.

Are you sure you have the proper drivers (e.g., nView or Hydravision) for your video card? Maybe Multimon is a solution.

Ah, thank you! I was a bit surprised that Ultramon didn't include that feature, so I'm downloading Hydravision right now.

Dual monitors is absolutely wonderful. I'd say it doubles my work efficiency. I have two video cards, an AGP card and a PCI card, which was the way to do things before these newfangled video cards that support two monitors. (There were ways before that, but this isn't a history lesson.) Anyway, I'd suggest plugging a spare PCI video card in your box, and connecting a spare monitor to see how it feels. Once you're in love with it, spring for the fancy dual head card. Of course this assumes that you have a lot of old hardware.

To answer your questions, dual monitors is definitely worth it. I don't know if the dual headed cards are worth the extra cash over a 2 card system, but it probably is. On my system, the resolutions of the two monitors are completely independent. I run one monitor at 1280x1024 and the other at 1600x1200. (17" LCD & 23" CRT) The taskbar only appears on one monitor by default, but Ultramon will give you that second taskbar. Ultramon also allows you to put a different wallpaper on each monitor, and is overall a very nice program.

Anyway, running two monitors is a completely different experience than running one larger monitor.

While places like Realtimesoft have some nice multihead photos, I'm more interested in finding out where I can get some nonpermanent multimonitor mounts. I've seen extendable poles that run between floor and ceiling that have had assorted kit hanging off them - I just can't find anywhere that sells them.

And trust me, you don't want to google on "extendable poles mount".

Aww, why stop your list at 4 monitors? I need to know what category I'm in with 6! :)

Photo of my setup:

6 monitors

The gallery has hundreds of other multiple-monitor setups of other people as well.

For me, I use the 6 monitors to "Remote Desktop" several physical PCs. The nice feature with Remote Desktop (built into WinXPPro) is that it doesn't POLL the remote screen (unlike VNC and PCAnywhere). The drawing of the windows are done client-side. This way you don't feel any lag whatsoever.

Another nice feature with Remote Desktop is your Copy and Paste works across your local and multiple Remote Desktops!

...without Ultramon . It's a great Windows utility that allows scripted secondary monitor switching and disabling, extended taskbar and lots of other functionality that you would expect with dual-monitors.

Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with Ultramon, other than as a pleased user.

Well this story happened to appear in the second of my monitors. For the mathematically astute among you, this implies that, yes indeed, I am a dual monitor user.
Am I more productive at this moment? Most definately not as I am reading slashdot rather that 40% essay due tommorrow. Infact I dare say no dual monitor users could reply to this thread and say they are increasing there productivity at that instant. Anyway...
Can dual monitors increase productivity? Why yes, I often take political science electives and find it a blessing to have a journal on one monitor and take notes on another. Or an spreadsheet and a end of month report in another. That is exactally the split focus task better suited to dual monitors rather than one huge monitor.
I also use it extensively for monitor based programs. Things like your mail client, media player, or p2p software. Applications you wish to check the progress of freguently, but which don't need to hold your focus. Its great having iTunes sitting there and be able to check which song is next or change the playlist.
Other distractions are certainly DVD's, but try as I might to train my eyes to focus seperately, alas I cannot watch two things at once. So dvd's are usually set to the directors commentry.
Or if I am playing some online game like Day of Defeat that has down time, I run a movie in the second monitor and watch it inbetween rounds.
However the most useless and least productive occupations I do is load up auto refresh sites. This one takes the latest pictures from live journal users and refereshes every 30 seconds or so. http://media.admirald.net/ljimages/?n=30&r=15+Seco nds Terrible waste of time, but you do get eccentric and sometimes pornographic pictures.
Back towards the practical sense of things, I find an application called Ultra Mon useful. http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/ Is a program I use to have a seperate task bar for each screen, and be able to set independant sizes, refresh rates and wallpapers. No, I am not part of them, just found the program helpful. And I apologise for being a Windows user.

• efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop
• manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar
• control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts
• multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers
• mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation

Why not use more ? Here is a image of a 10 monitor setup.

Here's a good site about multi-monitor setups.

Dual screens are very useful for 3D CAD work (ortho views on one screen for precise placement of objects, skewed view on the other for 3D view[1]) and for webpage work (HTML on one screen, preview in the other).

Enabling x-mouse (I.E., focus follows cursor) is probably a good idea.

[1] Some people like to put onscreen menus and buttons on one screen and the image on the other, but that seems like a lot of extra mouse movement compared to using keyboard shortcuts for commands.

Yeah, the mac version does that but on the PC, it is an MDI inteface which does not work well on multiple monitors since you can only move the toolbars to a different monitor.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't UltraMon enable MDI applications to use multiple monitors? IIRC, it can spread one application across two monitors, which can almost be done manually. The only bad part is that it costs money, and I believe such functionality should be built in to the OS.

I've got 26 things open right now and between a multi-tabbed browser, taskbars over two monitors and a sidebar I don't have any problem getting to what I want. The Alt-Tab Replacement helps too.

Part of the problem with 3D GUIs is that monitors are 2D devices, not 3D. Give me a workable 3D display device and manipulation tools (hint: I'm thinking of 'give me the real world' here) with my 3D GUI and you might have something. Even in the 'real world' however, 2D is often a most useful abstraction. Jakob Nielsen has an interesting column (with rebuttals) on the problems of 3D interfaces.

My second monitor at home is a 17" LCD and was pretty cheap. Indeed, two smaller monitors will give you more screen real-estate than a single large one, for a much lower price.

If you do go down the multi-monitor route in Windows, I'd highly recommend Ultramon which adds invaluable features missing in the OS (taskbar on second monitor, maximize to dual-screen, button to flip window from one monitor to another, turn on/off second monitor, multiple profiles, etc.)

...is here
When I was a developer I used to use 3.
Left was API / Help
Centre was IDE
Right was Output (+ Winamp, trillian etc)

Nowadays I keep my email on my secod monitor and my work on my main.

A second PCI video card can be had for nothing - and you can pick up small CRTs for beer money. For cost effective multitasking, go multimonitor.

Why do you need dual accelerated LCDs? Few-to-no games actually support multi-monitor 3D. Granted, you can force some 3D shooters like Q3 to span two monitors, but why would you? You're focus/crosshair would be split down the center. (I guess 3 monitors would be ideal, but you'd need a heck of a card to drive a 3D display at 3840x1024 or higher.)

A better bet would be to get a nice 3D AGP card (ATI Radeon 9600/9700/9800) for gaming on one monitor, and a cheap PCI, DVI-out card for driving the second LCD in desktop mode. A $60 ATI 9000/9100/9200, a Gfx5200, or any old Matrox card would do fine. WinXP has pretty good multi-card/multi-monitor capabilities. So does Linux.

You'll probably spend less money AND get better performance if you go with two cards, instead of trying to find one that does it all.

Also, here's a nice link for multi-monitor tips/software.

If you're using a dual(or more) monitor workstation, you'll definitely want to check out UltraMon (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/).

It is THE best app for using a multi-monitor configuration, and I am not exaggerating(sp?) at all.

That site also runs a database (http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/db.asp) of Multi-Monitor configurations if anyone is interested in checking their system for compatibility.

If you're using a dual(or more) monitor workstation, you'll definitely want to check out UltraMon (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/).

It is THE best app for using a multi-monitor configuration, and I am not exaggerating(sp?) at all.

That site also runs a database (http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/db.asp) of Multi-Monitor configurations if anyone is interested in checking their system for compatibility.

Ya know, I really can't believe no one has mentioned this yet. But for those of us who love multiple monitors in Windows, UltraMon is the icing on the cake.

It gives you two extra buttons in each window that allow you to either move the window to the other monitor proportionally, or maximize the window across all monitors. It also allows you to have different backgrounds on each monitor. However, THIS is the killer app: A taskbar for each monitor. Once you've tried this, you can't go back. The windows on your 2nd monitor show up in the taskbar on the 2nd monitor instead of the first. It sounds simple, but it is AMAZINGLY effective. Using a system that has multi-mon without using UltraMon is almost as bad as going from a multi-mon system to single monitor. Check it out, they have a free trial and I guarantee you'll be hooked.

We tested a few here at work and picked the Matrox G550 Dual DVI
It's a low profile AGP card that comes with both low profile and standard brackets so it'll mount in just about any case.
It's $148 from CDW but only comed with a Dual VGA cable.. The Dual DVI is an extra $54.
Our low buck DVI monitor pick is the NEC LCD 15460m It's a 15" LCD with a nice picture, decent speakers, DVI & VGA inputs and a USB 2.0 4 port hub in the base.
CDW wants $370 but you can get em from Dell for $350. Get the 1560X if you don't need the USB hub.

For you Winders users snag Ultramon" to gain extra control over your new dual monitor setup.

I've been using Multi monitors at work for years. I can't go back!!
When I got my Dell C840 laptop I noticed the Gforce card was showing 2 monitor support so I quickly moved the monitor off the docking station, junked the stand and opened up the laptop screen. Wow 2 monitors!

Throw on Ultramon or Multi-mon for complete control over the desktop (for the winders crowd)

Or your favorite Linux setup

Prople kept stoping as they walked by my pit( err cube) and saying how cool it was. We got the manager over helpdesk interested enough to spring for a Matrox G550 Dual DVI card to test out for the Help desk operators.
They like it so much the desks for the new help desk office space are being designed for 2 monitors.

We tried 2 cards out.. We had an ATI Radion card but under Win2k it only works as 1 big desktop space over 2 monitors.. They Hydramon software they use to make it feel like 2 desktops really blows.. The G550 with Ultramon proved to be the way to go.

A good resource for multiple monitors is here.

I use 3 monitors at home Left is API, Centre is IDE, Right is Application (plus Trillian, WinAmp etc). One you've gone double, you never want to go back :-)

On windows 98 & XP it's dead easy. Shove in an old PCI card and away you go. I've never got it working properly with Linux.

T

I run dual 17" monitors (GF4 MX and a GF2 MX) on Windows 2000 Professional and I don't even bother with NVidia's NView app. Haven't found a single use for it other than it being unreasonably slow for features I don't need. For everything Windows 2000 doesn't do out of the box, I just use UltraMon.

UltraMon still leaves a bit of a memory footprint but it's not nearly as bad or as slow as NView. It's this unobtrusive (and persistent) little system tray icon that gives me all kinds of settings that NView seems to offer as well, except faster. Some of the features I appreciate in particular are:

Shortcut keys to swap programs between monitors (proportionally or to fit - INCREDIBLY useful if you run different resolutions)

Shell extensions for switching monitors or maximizing.

A simple double-click on the systray icon (or a definable keyboard shortcut) to turn off the secondary monitor on demand, such as if you want to run an OpenGL game without the second monitor looking all weird.

Individual desktop wallpaper settings.

The program itself creates shortcuts that set a program to start on a certain monitor.

Saving window sizes and positions.

You can enable two separate taskbars if you want, and either have each taskbar show all the tasks or have each separate taskbar show the tasks running on that specific monitor.

That's the bulk of its features. Great little program. Unfortunately, yes, it is $40 to register, and there are discounts for multiple licenses, but for me personally it was well worth the cost for the extreme ease of use it provides me with my monitors.

I have tried NView, but it kind of seems like it's trying too hard to be useful, where UltraMon just works, and works great. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone with dual monitors.

This site really helped me decide what I wanted to do for multi-monitor support. ANd they have info on stuff like multi-monitor KVM switches, and getting Nvidia and ATI cards to fully support Win2K.

www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/

- Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/

One thing I did come across was several software packages that claim to have tamed the multiple-monitor beast. Some, like Ultramon , seem to integrate well (with MS OSs) and attempt to provide some common sense to windowing actions. There's also Matrox's software thay may performs similar tasks. I haven't actually used any of them however, but they may address some of your issues. But of course, that means possible added complexity for our massive IT department.

...buy another screen. Half decent 2D PCI graphics cards are under £20 and monitors can be had for next to nothing if you get them from companies that are upgrading their systems. I've found it slightly tricky to get multiple monitors working under Mandrake 8 (yes, I'm sure I should upgrade), but Windows 98 and XP handle it fine.

What my system looks like.

For anybody considering building a multi-monitor setup of their own, you should definitely consult Multi-Monitor Resources which has a database of almost 3000 video card/OS hardware combinations that people have tried, along with their compatibility results. Dualhead and Twinview are very nice as single card solutions, but the old school setup is to use one video card per monitor. One guy in the database has a five-monitor setup, each driven by its own card.