I purchased a MacBook Pro a few months ago. It’s been great, but I found the screen to be a bit small for my liking. So I added an external monitor, an old Formac 17″ LCD (1280×1024) that I’ve been using for years. That worked pretty well, but I just didn’t feel I had enough screen space.
As luck would have it, I found a used 23″ Apple Cinema Display on Craigslist at a bargain price. A MacBook Pro with a Cinema Display is the way to go! I tossed aside the Formac with nary a thought.
But then I thought it would be cool to also make use of the Formac as well, after all you can’t have enough screens. Alas, the MacBook Pro can only drive one external monitor. Or so I thought.
Earlier this month, I stumbled across an ad in MacWorld for a USB-DVI adapter from Gefen and decided to give it a try. I ordered one from an Amazon vendor (for $97 from PricePiggie) and received it very quickly. It worked like a charm! So now, I had two external monitors connected to my MacBook Pro.
But I wanted more! Today I came across ScreenRecycler on the MacUpdate Promo page. It lets you use another computer’s screen (Mac, Windows or Linux) as yet another external monitor. Since I happen to keep an old Windows XP laptop lying around, I thought I would give it a try. After playing around with it a little, I also got it to work!
So now I have 3 external monitors for a total of 4 screens:
- 1440×900: MacBook Pro
- 1920×1200: 23″ Cinema Display
- 1280×1024: Formac 17″ LCD
- 1280×1024: Compaq laptop
That’s over 6 million pixels! Even a 30″ Cinema Display only has about 4 million pixels. Of course there are some limitations…
First, the DisplayLink driver for the Gefen USB-DVI adapter is still in beta so it’s a bit slow. There’s a noticeable lag when moving the mouse on the monitor or when dragging windows. I really use it to keep my e-mail, chat clients and other relatively static stuff open. Performance should only improve as the driver gets updated. It also tends to prevent the laptop from sleeping, but it’s easy enough to just unplug before putting the laptop to sleep.
I’m still trying out the ScreenRecycler demo (which has a time limit for connections), but so far it seems worth the $15 bucks. I tried several Windows VNC clients, but I could only get VNC Navigator to work with it. The screen refreshes are also quite slow. However, I haven’t played around enough to see if I can tweak the settings to improve performance.
More importantly, you all probably want to know what this looks like. Well, it took a little rearranging of my desk to fit everything, but overall I’m happy with the setup. I’ll get a picture up soon, I promise.
4 Responses to “Multiple Monitor Madness”
Thanks for the blog. You might want to check out synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/), an open source project (windows,mac,linux). It’s not really a way to add another screen to your computer, however it is a way to use your keyboard to control another computer. I use it to run a browser or word processor or pdf or… on a spare laptop, usually for reference. Much simpler than VNC.
I did look at that, but the page said the OS X version was still “incomplete” so I didn’t bother trying it.
paul, just wondering which method you would recommend? im looking at using a windows pc or hackintosh for screenrecycler or using a toshiba dynadock which is similar to the gefen. id be running them off a macbook. still not sure which way to go.
The Gefen adapter has been wonderful. I use it all the time and it works great. ScreenRecycler has been more of a gimmick for me, so I haven’t used it all that much.