using two monitors with a laptop

Hi guys,
I'm about to buy a laptop and wondered if it would be possible to use my 20'' lcd as a second screen rather than using it instead of the normal screen?

thanks!

 

So, screen #1 = laptop screen and screen #2 = external LCD?

 

yea I do it with a seperate 15 inch screen next to my laptop. you just hit fn f8 and then go to control panel and mess with some settings until your mouse drags perfectly from one screen to the other.

 

coriolis-
yes, that's what i meant..

 

would a built-in video card be able to do that, or should i buy some kind of geforce...?

 

I've done this with dozens of laptops (since I run an auditorium where visiting speakers use their laptops with our projector, which is the same thing as an external monitor). It always works fine, no matter what kind of video hardware the laptop has.

However, for best results, make sure your new laptop can feed the VGA or DVI output at the native resolution of your 20" monitor. For example, the native resolution of many 20" widescreen LCD monitors is 1680x1050 (yours may be different; check). Not every laptop can provide that resolution at its external video port. Feeding a lower resolution will result in a somewhat fuzzy picture (the monitor will have to enlarge the pixels), or a picture that doesn't fill the 20" screen.

Your laptop and external monitor don't need to have the same aspect ratio (widescreen vs standard) as long as you don't need to "clone" the displays and you don't need to move windows between the screens too often. If these needs are important, then think about matching the aspect ratios.

r

 

thank you so much RDClark, i couldn't have wished for a better reply!
I made sure all laptops enable me to use my native resulotion in a previous post.

thanks again RDClark and to you too chesieofdarock