Using Two Monitors Simultaneously for More Screen Space

Subscriber Nena wrote to ask about using two monitors at the same time to give her more screen "real estate:"

I purchased a 2nd monitor thinking I could load a web site on one and my genealogy program on the other. I have been printing or hand-writing the info in order to get it on my program.

I can now transfer from one monitor to the other, but only one shows at a time. Am I missing something? Can I see both monitors at the same time or did I waste my money on the second monitor?

Thanks, Nena

There are several steps in getting this to work.

From your comment that you can transfer from one monitor to the other, I assume you mean that both monitors are connected at the same time and that both show the same thing at the same time.

If only one monitor displays ANYTHING at any given time, that’s a different problem. I don’t have more than one monitor per computer at home, so I’ve never had to set that up.

I have two LCD monitors at work to go with my Dell Lattitude and its docking station. The docking station supports one analog monitor and one digital monitor at the same time. That is, both are working, but by default, they show exactly the same thing.

That’s where a nice add-on program somes into play. I use a program at work called UltraMon, which lets me have one huge desktop that spans across my two monitors.

Sometimes, I’m reading one document on one monitor and making notes and comments about using the other monitor. Other times, I have something entirely unrelated on the second monitor. When I work with some Excel spreadsheets (one of my current ones is about 20,000 lines and 40 MB in size), UltraMon lets me stretch the spreadsheet across both monitors. I can see much more of the spreadsheet at one time that way.

Purchase price for one license is $39.95 according to the publisher’s web site http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/. There’s a trial version of UltraMon, which is limited to 30 days.