Duel screen - yay or nay?

[EtheAv8r]

Im of to uni this saturday and id saved up a £150 for a fridge, however iv just been told i cant use a fridge due to health and safety(please, someone explain that to me?).

Health & Saftey = Nanny State + Interfering Jobsworth + the Death of Common Sense + Lack of freedom to assess and take reasonable calculated risks = can't do anything nowadays without unbelieveble hassle and Bureaucracy, and a lot of good, safe fun stuff simply does not happen anymore.

[Kumagoro]

Dont be put off gettng a fridge just beacuse they say you cant.
All you do is get one of those little ones and i dont mean the really cheap
nasty ones. Then when its inspection day put a cloth over it and a couple of ornaments when they come round for inspection turn it off.
They will never know.

[IBM]

like owning a fridge

[Andeh13]

well said EtheAv8r, couldnt have put it better myself.

I cant see myself sticking with the no-fridge rule for long, give it a few weeks to settle down and after the inital inspection(im sure there'll be one) ill try and smuggle a small one in.

I just cant see how 6 guys are meant to share 1 built in(ie under the counter in a cupboard) fridge. I dont want to have to go shopping for food every other day, and its only going to lead to arguements over who took whos food etc. Its daft.

Either way, still cant figure out this fullscreen problem. I open up mediaportal and it runs on the 2nd screen, only windowed. I make it start load fullscreen and it hops accross to the primary window. Any ideas?

[Funkstar]

One problem i have noticed is when i try to run Mediaportal(TV program) on full screen it runs on the primary monitor, is there anyway to make it default to the secondry monitor whenever i run it? Having the mediaportal icon on the 2nd screen makes it run windowed on it, but as soon as i make it fullscreen it jumps to monitor #1.

If you search the MP forums (http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/) someone has a utility that will force MP to open on your secondary display. It's a bit of a hack to do it, but it works apparently. However this setup isn't supported, and DirectX is restricted to the primary display, so nothing will be accelerated, slowing down your PC and may cause other problems. I seem to think this may change when they move to a new rendering engine (not to be confused with the new TV engine that's in the works) but that could just be a figment of my over active imagination

[dancingmatt]

Have you tried the workaround I suggested? You need to open an application on a primary display, then minimise and switch the primary display to the other screen. The minimised game/application might reopen on the screen it was on, which is now the secondary one...

[arthurleung]

AFAIK switching resolution / primary display can cause BSOD or some programs crashing (happened to me)

I used Media Player Classic and it have no problem full-screen on the second display

[Andeh13]

2nd monitor has been taken back to the family PC so i cant give it a go just yet, ill pikey it back tomorrow and give it another go.

Thanks for the advice & suggestions so far guys, appriciate it.

[MadduckUK]

when forza 2 comes out for the 360 ill be buying a 20 or so inch widescreen monitor to use it on. hopefully a month or two after that ill have enough to get a second one, then i can retire the sony/dell CRT and have an insane sized workspace for when im working and a screen for 360 and a screen for comp when im not. shall be most excellent

[Jonny]

I'm also off to Uni this Sat! To Newcastle.

I used to have dual monitors, both 17", but switched to a 20.1" widescreen.

Back when I had the dual screens I swore by them and said I'd never go back to one by itself, but was forced to because of lack of space. Now I'd never go back to them - I prefer having one decent screen.

[UpTheToon]

Jonny:

You'll enjoy yourself in the Toon

Some good nights down the quayside and in baja await...

[tfboy]

I have the ability to use 4 Dell 2001FP TFTs so that's 1600x1200 x 4

There's no compromise for windows desktop real estate. Once you get used to it, you'll never be able to live without it. Try using Windows without a scroll-buttoned mouse

It'll add value to your work you do on the PC too. Like others have said, it's very useful to be able to for example write code on one screen, run it on the other. Or for when you're doing research work, have Word on one screen, Google results on the other, etc, etc.

I've found Ultramon very useful too - you can add buttons on the menu bar of each application and maximise to one monitor, both monitors (spread across them), or move from one monitor to another. It also adds the task bar on both monitors so every application is shown on the taskbar or which ever screen the window is on (if that makes sense!)

Oh, and widescreen, landscape background pics look awesome too

[nichomach]

I'm using 2x2001FPs at work currently, running off a Matrox P650 and I've been using dual screens at work for a few years. It really does save an immense amount of time and effort. As the cable ads say, "If you can, you should".

[chuckskull]

I have the ability to use 4 Dell 2001FP TFTs so that's 1600x1200 x 4

If it weren't for the no swearing rule this post would be a line of stars.

[MSIC]

I have the ability to use 4 Dell 2001FP TFTs so that's 1600x1200 x 4

You pansy.

[RedPutty]

I have dual monitors and rarely use the other one tbh, I would rather have a single higher res and bigger monitor.