Are you using dual monitors? If so, how?

thanks Craig, I have 2010 on my laptop.  unfortunately only 2007 on my desktop, time to start a fight with my it team

Phil

That's the spirit, Phil

I'm with the majority here using dual monitors. Usually they are set up as follows:

1. Powerpoint / Presenter
2. IE, Engage or Quizmaker, project folder

I can get by on one screen at home using my mac as hot corners make it easy enough to switch, but at work I would seriously struggle without two screens for my PC. As for tunes I use my ipod. Our IT policy is too restrictive around music/streaming so its just easier to bring my own.

Blair

Try hooking up your desktop monitor to your laptop like you would a projector. 

Two monitors makes it so much easier.  Usually Articulate/Content program on one, source (PPT, Word ect) on the other, Photoshop almost always open. 

I'm running two monitors but I wish I had three.

Monitor one

•  Logging Activity Comments
•  Working on projects

Monitor two

• Email
• Gadgets
• Telephony Switchboard
• Softphone interface

However there are times when I'm troubleshooting phone logs and a third screen would be helpful.

Are most newer, high-end systems shipping with three monitor support? Or is an external card and fan upgrade required?

In order to run dual or triple monitors you need a compatible graphic card. As long as the motherboard will support the card, it really doesn't matter how old the PC or MAC is.   My HDMI monitor cable feeds off one port and has a splitter. Then I just set the dual monitor up via the control panel / display icon. On my home PC I actually have dual SLI Nvidia GT9800 cards that boosts graphic performance and I am able to easily run two monitors. However many gamers actually use three to six Nvidia SLI Cards to run games and I can only imagine just how fast these games run.

Two monitors here, throughout our department. (Wish we had three!)

I use the monitors somewhat "freely"  but here's a "snapshot" of my daily use:

Monitor 1: PPT open with the window spread over monitor 1 and 2: On the left is the PPT storyboard, on the right is the Articulate version of the course I'm building

Monitor 2: "behind" the PPT, e-mail, file and file resource folders open, Photoshop open and minimized for on-the-fly image edits.

Minimized below may be 10 other document folders, word docs, etc.

(which is why I wish I had three monitors, it's always all going on at once for me.)

Edit: Oh... and I also have a laptop that sometime serves as e-mail and always as my music... my iPod is hooked up to it and it's on a wireless network that isn't behind our firewall like my production machine is, so I can view tutorials and other necessary-but-firewall-blocked stuff. So I SORT of have three monitors but the laptop monitor is no good for quality viewing of graphics.

Phil - you can, even with 2007 (works for Excel too). If you have two PPTs open:

• Click on the View tab
• Drag your PPT window to cover both screens
• Click on Arrange All

Now that I'm trying to actually do this to make sure these steps are in the right order, I can't get PPT to open up on my computer....argh. Will have to reboot. Anyway, you can view more than one PPTs at once utilizing multiple screens.