What is the easiest solution for a college student to get more screen space?

What is the easiest solution for a college student to get more screen space?

A bigger laptop?

An external monitor? Which would you recommend?

I heard of other people also using multiple laptops or tablets that they already have and somehow making those into extra screens.

 

Just curious, what's your current monitor's resolution?

Anyway, using multiple computers to share the screens is a pretty big pain to setup, so I wouldn't recommend it.

The most important factor for screen space is screen resolution, and the more the merrier. That said, the easiest (and cheapest) way to go about this would be to get a high-res external monitor (or 2, 3, whatever you want, limited by what your computer can handle). Having a bigger laptop won't necessarily give you any more screen real estate (it could be the same resolution as your smaller laptop, in which case it's a pointless "upgrade", with the only effect being that you get a lower pixel density (things "look" bigger)).

 

Id prioritize getting a good external monitor over upgrading a laptop monitor.

Try aiming for similar pixel density on both.

 

Well, on a 15"+, I'd prioritize 1920x1080 over 1366x768 then move to external monitors. Assume that you will be in situations where you will not have access to an external monitor. For when you're home though, an external will do just fine. At my office, I use an external with the laptop monitor to display less important stuff. It's especially useful to transfer data/charts between Excel spreadsheets and Excel and Word. It's also great to have a paper you need to reference and the document you're writing side by side or have a software you're using that requires as much resolution as possible and the assignment questions side by side.

As an undergrad, I often worked in the library, in cafes, random locations on campus, etc. to appreciate the use of higher resolution displays on a laptop. Note that some resolutions like 1920x0180 on an 11" display can't be used without scaling because everything would be too tiny so the effective resolution will be lower. Match the resolution with the display size so that things don't look too tiny, but that you get as much as usable real estate as possible.

If you're into mechanical engineering or other types of engineering that require a lot of calculations and not necessarily programming, you'll want the higher resolutions for Excel alone. You'd be surprised at how big spreadsheets can become. It's also great for programming since you can display more windows on screen. Coding using MATLAB during my years as an undergrad in chemical engineering was also a joy on higher resolution displays. I could have the main program, various functions side by side and it made it easier to debug errors in the code, make sure everything was properly written to work together etc.

I moved from 1280x800 to 1440x900 to 1920x1080 and the difference in my workflow was noticeable each time. I still consider something like 1280x800 usable, but it's definitely not my go to choice.

 

External will be cheaper than any other path. Your laptop will surely have 1 or 2 display interfaces and if you didn't USB to VGA adapters are cheap and readily available.

If you just need extra real estate for workflow don't be ashamed to get a cheap china brand monitor and call it a day.

If your feeling like the cheapest route to upgrade resolution on the laptop itself for when your not at home, its possible there are higher resolution panels that are compatible with your laptop, but installing them is not a novice task.
So I would save the money on that upgrade and put it towards a whole new laptop down the road.

Don't forget if you have a HDTV at home, its a big computer monitor readily available for you to extend your desktop to as well.

 

I have a 14" Laptop with a 900p screen that I connect to a 1920x1200 24" monitor at my desk. As long as your roomates aren't a bunch of -hats and you enjoy studying in your room, get an external, two screens is better than one!

 

The EASIEST way to get more screen space is:
- right click on desktop, select 'Personalize'
- in lower left corner of the 'Personalize' window select 'Display'
- in middle left of the 'Display' window select 'Set custom text size (DPI)'
- adjust to your liking

That's for Windows 7, in Windows 8/8.1 it may be slightly different.

 

External would be the way to go.

I use my external monitor as the primary display (desktop) and i use the notebook screen as the secondary for my emails and skype. Its great for multitasking.

 

Does it get cheaper than this?

Amazon.com: Asus VW193DR 19-Inch LCD Monitor: Electronics

What chords or connections do I need to connect my laptop to an external monitor? Will I be abl to use laptop screen + external monitor or just external monitor? How do I get both easily and cheaply?

 

You can use an external monitor as well as your laptop's monitor at the same time, that won't be a problem.

Personally though, I've learned my lesson about getting cheap computer parts and then later on finding out I need something better, so I wouldn't recommend that monitor at all. You'd be much better off with something like this ( Acer G226HQLBbd Black 21.5" 5ms Widescreen LED Monitor200 cd/m2 ACM 100,000,000:1 (600:1) No - Retail - Newegg.com) as it'll give you much more screen real estate than the monitor you linked to (that's 1440x900, while my link is 1920x1080, or just under 780,000 more pixels), for not much more. Better to spend ~$100 on a decent monitor now than to buy a $80 subpar monitor and then later on realize it wasn't all that good (and then buy another monitor).

 

Air Display: iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac or Windows PC as an external monitor

but I still recommend a good external, or two, or 6

 

That monitor will only work with some laptops, mostly older ones. Which laptop do you have? You need to match the laptops outputs to the monitors inputs, i.e. vga, dvi, display port, hdmi, etc. Each laptop and monitor is different.

 

There are better monitors to buy for the money I agree but to say that monitor wont work with some laptops mostly older ones I disagree.

It has a VGA connector (DB15) and this is still the most common connection and modern laptops are still using it. If you find a new laptop without a VGA connection there is a very high chance it has a DVI-I port and that also works with VGA just need a $1.00 adapter to convert from the DVI connection to the VGA connection, I have like half a dozen of them just laying around :/

 

Is there a easy or simple guide you guys would recommend for me to understand what chords or software I would need to be able to connect my laptop to an external screen and use both?

Does the type of chord affect what kind of software I need?

You mentioned vga connector- is there a list of connectors I should see if my laptop has?

If I know wihch connectors to check for and what they look like maybe after that I can go about finding the right monitor.

 

*Cords. And you shouldn't need any special software to connect an external monitor to your laptop. Simply check your laptop for video ports (VGA, HDMI, etc) and make sure that whatever monitor you're eying has at least one of those connections. That's really it.

Make sure you get at least a half-decent display, though. I still recommend at least something with 1080p, as the 900p monitor you linked to was pretty low quality.