Create a Dual Screen With Doubleview
I’ve seen them doing it at work. It makes me drool. No, I’m not talking about eating donuts, or leaving the office early on a Friday. At risk of sounding like a true Laptopical dork, I’ll admit that I’m entranced by the idea of a dual screen laptop. You know, when you tap into the luxuriant space of two monitors, with the power to swerve your cursor from one end all the way to the next. It’s like having a six-lane highway all to yourself.
Now everybody can enjoy that kind of breathing room. A company called Laplink Software has put out a new product called DoubleView that allows you to take your old laptop screen, desktop monitor, or even tablet PC display and transform it into an extra workspace.
And it’s all done with a download that doesn’t cost more than a few dozen donuts-$34.95 to be exact. Normally, tapping into multi-screening can cost a pretty penny because you generally need a second video card or a dual-output card, which could run you 10 times as much as DoubleView. No wonder only the kiss-asses at work get to multi-screen.
With DoubleView, you can set up your dual screen PC without any hardware and without the need for an IP address. All you need is the spare screen, Windows 98, ME, 2000, 2003, XP on the old computer, and wireless, FireWire, cable network wire, or USB cable to attach the two screens.
Your second display can be set to run in three different modes: full-screen mode, so both screens run in the same resolution (up to 3,200 by 1,600); the Windows screen mode, where images appear in a window that can be moved around the second display; or the fit-to-screen mode, which blows up whatever image you’re looking at to fill the second screen.
Best of all, when your cursor flies from one screen to the next, or you drag a window back and forth, there’s no smearing or sticking. Laplink credits its “on-the-fly” compression, which cuts down on response time on the displays.
Man, I’m drooling just talking about making my laptop dual screen. Hopefully somebody brings donuts tomorrow into work. For more information and pricing visit Laplink.com.
By Henrik Stigell – Laptopical
Saturday, May 20, 2006