Tendo City

(Adapted from chat)

I have two monitors hooked up to my computer now...
it's pretty cool. Now I can have twice as many web browser tabs open easily... It is pretty handy though all around. I don't want to go back to one screen. :)

I do wish a few things though...

-You should be able to display different wallpaper on each screen (that'd be a cool feature)
-Why can't you access the taskbar from other screens, it can only be in one place
-Also the computer remembers which window programs were in so when you open them again they return to the same screen... often useful, sometimes annoying.

Oh, and I have one game where you can move the mouse over to the other screen, but if you click it of course task-switches out of the fullscreen game... and you can't get back, it crashes. Most games properly capture the mouse onto only one screen though, so the other one is displaying whatever but you can't interact with it.

Still though, it's pretty cool. Being able to have something open in one window that I want to look at sometimes while I mostly use the other one, reduces clutter or hidden windows quite a bit. I put Winamp, or downloads, or whatever on the other screen so instead of just being in the background I can see them. And as I said, being able to have web browser windows open on both screens lets me use more tabs easily. If they're both the same browser (two Seamonkey windows, that is) you don't even have to click on each one to activate them, both are active simultaneously so just move the mouse over to the other one and you can scroll in that window or something. If it's Seamonkey in one and Firefox in the other though or something you do have to click, of course.

Also, it reminded me once again that CRTs are better than LCDs. One of the screens is an LCD and the colors aren't nearly as good. That's why it's the secondary, not the primary. The CRTs one downside is size, and the resulting limited maximum screen size too, but the picture is better, the LCD looks bad in comparison... the colors are just not right. Everything looks dull and flat, the vibrancy of the color is gone, and the colors are less accurate too.

I admit that it's not a new LCD and newer ones are likely better, but based on this one, that's how it is. My crt is a 17" Dell CRT monitor from late 2001, while the LCD is a mid '00s Dell 17" (normal, not widescreen, VGA connector, not DVI). Their screens may be the same size, but the CRT has more resolution options, higher refresh rates, and better colors. The LCD only wins on thinness and maximum brightness, and that latter one really is not an advantage -- by default the screen is far too bright. You can mess with the colors, sure, but it's really just a brightness setting for the whole screen. Turn it down and everything gets darker. At least you can do that, but that does nothing to fix the not very good colors, it just makes it a little less glaringly bright (at the cost of that new brightness being the new max).

etoven said something about "glossy finish" LCD screens being better. I don't really know much about different kinds of LCD tech.

Also, as I said, this lcd also supports fewer resolutions and frequencies than the crt. Though I admit I don't have its actual drivers installed, the computer just recognizes the LCD as 'generic monitor' while it correctly identifies the CRT as an Dell m781s. With the drivers they have though the lcd has max res 1280x1024, max 75hz frequency, while the crt can do 1600x1200, hz max depends on resolution -- 60hz only at 1600x1200, but 100hz at the 1024x768 that I run my desktop. So the CRT's 100hz while the LCD is 75.

I'm not a multi-monitor person, but my girlfriend is and she swears by UltraMon. It fixes both issues you are referring to (different wallpapers/separate taskbars). Look it up :)

So I take it with multiple moniters you can scale back from that insane 800x600 super high resolution to a much more manageable 320x200?

Dark Jaguar Wrote:So I take it with multiple moniters you can scale back from that insane 800x600 super high resolution to a much more manageable 320x200?

Oh come on, haven't you people had enough with that joke by now? I stopped using that resolution 3 3/4ths years ago when I got this computer. And even if I was still using it, there's nothing wrong with it anyway.

On another note though, I really wish that this computer could do 320x240 fullscreen, or anything below 640x400, for that matter. It can't, which is very, very frustrating for games and applications that would be best with it, such as DOSBox, or require it, such as fullscreen mode in games like FireFight (um, that game at all in fact), Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, etc. There is a workaround to get it working, I think, but if it works but it requires changing display drivers and is a complete pain because I'd need to reboot, play that game, then change the drivers back and reboot AGAIN. Ugh. Yeah, I find NVidia's removal of support for fullscreen resolutions below 640x400 very frustrating. This at least is not a Microsoft issue. I wonder if ATI's done the same thing? I've never owned an ATI video card, so I wouldn't know.

EdenMaster Wrote:I'm not a multi-monitor person, but my girlfriend is and she swears by UltraMon. It fixes both issues you are referring to (different wallpapers/separate taskbars). Look it up

I will, those would be great features to have.

A Black Falcon Wrote:Oh come on, haven't you people had enough with that joke by now? I stopped using that resolution 3 3/4ths years ago when I got this computer. And even if I was still using it, there's nothing wrong with it anyway.

Hey, we still call out DMiller on his No-Meat Legs. There is no expiration date on TC harassment :D

For what it's worth ABF, I found that the solution to that problem is simply to run that game at double the resolution, since it nests perfectly within the lower one it should display without any artifacts at all.

If double doesn't work, quadruple. That's how I'm forced to run the KQ remakes. It works just fine. The only downside is you need a display capable of those resolutions and the computer has to be fast enough to display that resolution without issue (modern machines should all meet both of these requirements).

Windows games from the '90s which are programmed to run in full screen 320x240 don't necessarily have a fullscreen 640x480 option, of course for games that have them I'd use that... but in the cases of those games I just mentioned, and some others, no such luck.

In DOSBox of course you can just run it scaled up, as you say, and that's how I do run it, but for Windows programs you can't do that. One reason why I often prefer to use DOS versions of some games when I can, instead of the annoyingly broken on modern machines Windows ones... I always play Sierra adventure games that have DOS versions in DOS, for instance, Sierra's Windows adventure game engine was just awful. Unfortunately, though, not all games have DOS versions. DOS games were common into 1996, but in '97 they gradually died off, that was the last year with many significant DOS releases. That year was when we got our first Windows 95 computer, too, mid '97...

I gotta level with you here. I'm rather surprised you're complaining about... what is it now? Ports of two Genesis games? Yeah I'm not feeling it. Normally I'd be all "yeah compatibility!" but so far those are the only two old Windows games I've heard of that actually require 320x200 to run properly. There may be more, but it's the first I'm hearing of any games that don't run in at least 640x480 in Windows. Even the Windows 3.1 versions of King's Quest 5 and so on ran in 640x480 (the art assets are still 320x200 but it just does a resolution doubling and resizes it into the new one, hence those black bars on top and bottom due to aspect ratio differences).

So because you think that certain games aren't worth playing or something you don't think I should care that I can't play them, or can't play them properly? That's not right...

Anyway though, sure those games work at 640x480 or more (depending on case)... windowed. But I hate playing any game in a window that should be fullscreen, so I can't stand playing them that way. I know I've said this before, but that's one of the biggest problems with those Windows versions of '90s Sierra adventure games I mentioned, so many run windowed only... it's just awful, I wouldn't want to even touch them compared to the fullscreen DOS versions.

Or you could just play the ROM versions of those two Genesis games and completely negate all resolution problems.

I've used two monitors at work for the past couple years, and I would never want to go back. It's very useful to, say, use SQL in one window to hit queries/updates to the database and have the code on the other. Or, have the code displayed on one and the application running in real-time on the other.

For home use, I have a widescreen (which I LOVE, got it for free from work when they were upgrading). Two screens isn't as much of a necessity there, but whenever I leave my job, I'll be pissed if I have to return to one screen at the new place. On the other hand, the plan is to get into independent contracting, so in that case, I suppose I can just buy another one anyway.