Question about external monitor

Hi...

I'm not knowlegable about screen resolutions, vid cards, external displays and the like...but I just bought a dv6500t with a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS in it with a screen resolution of 1280 X 800.

Is it possible to buy and external monitor and have a higher resolution running on it? I wanted to purchase an external display just to have one that is bigger and easier on the eyes, but i've recently gotten into painter and some other programs and it would be nice to have a higher resolution.

Is there any way to acheive this, or will I have to use a 1280X800 resolution on my larger display (which to me seems akward, since wanted to go with about a 22", that can't look good). Oh and my laptop does have an HDMI output on it, i dont know if that would be of any use...

Any help or input would be greatly appreciated, thnx all

 

The nvidia 8400M-GS can support an external monitor resolution up to 2560x1600 I believe.

"Dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560x1600" - from the nvidia website:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8M_techspecs.html

 

The external display of your monitor is independent of the one you have on the laptops LCD. You can run any res on the monitor, while keeping the native one on the laptop. This is unless you have them cloned, in which case I believe it will be whatever the laptop lcd is set at. But if the external is simply an extension of your other lcd, or on it's own, it can be at anything.

For example, right now I'm running a 22" LCD at 1680*1050 while my laptop LCD is at 1280*800. They are both running at the same time with the external being an extension of my desktop.

 

awsome... just what i needed to know

thanks guys!