So, how exactly do you get quad displays on a Dell Latitude D620. Easy! Get yourself one of those fancy Dell D/Dock Expansion Station docking stations and a D-Family monitor Stand, and then install a dual-head PCI video card in the single slot in the docking station.

By default, any of the D/Dock docking stations have a single VGA analog output and a DVI connector on the back. Provided you have one of each type of connector on your displays (the Dell 19″ screens I’m using have both connectors)…you can do dual-displays that way. Heck, even with just the laptop, you can connect an external display and use the built-in LCD panel on the laptop for a dual display setup.

But, if you add a PCI card with dual ports (I chose an older Nvidia GeForce FX-5200 card I had), you can connect two more monitors up to your laptop. All four of these displays are running in native 1280×1024 for a total of 5120 pixels to enjoy left to right. (and if you pick a nice wallpaper like I did for this demo, trust me it’s very nice).

I’m running Windows Vista Ultimate on this laptop, and there’s a few things to note on both Vista and XP. Both operating systems don’t seem to allow you the ability to control the monitor numbering order. So I ended up with from left to right a 3-1-2-4 configuration. So when you go to tile your quad-wide wallpaper across all 4 screens, Windows will section it based on the numbering order on the screens that it’s auto assigned. This sucks and doesn’t work for most situations.

So, what you need to do is get a copy of a 3rd party program to help you with wallpaper placement. In the past on XP I’ve used a program called Ultramon, but I don’t believe they have a Vista version out yet (although I’ve seen a rumored beta copy that exists). Also, this application is not freeware so you’ll need to buy a licensed copy to use it.

DisplayFusion on the other hand is free. They do have a Pro version for $10 which unlocks many more features. But the free version seems to fit what I needed for simply just rearranging the wallpaper sections on the right screens.

And that’s pretty much it. Position your screens, get a nice hi-res quad-display wallpaper (or make your own from a hi-res picture that you crop). And you’re good to go. It makes things a lot easier to work with if you have multiple windows open up all the time. I use it a lot for multiple Remote Desktop sessions and Putty sessions I have open all the time. Also good for keeping email up on a screen at all times, or if your a developer or writing scripts, nice to have your IDE open on one screen, a command prompt on another, maybe webpage on the third…. the possibilities are endless.

Technorati Tags: d620, displayfusion, laptop, latitude, multi-display, quad-display, ultramon

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Ok, this is just a generic post for me here since I’ve been slacking off so much lately and not posting to my blog.  Truthfully, I’ve been gaming a little bit lately at night on the Cloudbook and haven’t spent time on the computer doing much else.  Been playing Thief 2 a lot lately.  I figure I’m just going to go through the entire game, and then play Deus Ex again since both of these games run really well on the Cloudbook.  Thief 2 actually runs very well on an external monitor in full 1280×1024 mode.  I’m somewhat surprised too, I didn’t think the Cloudbook could push that on a game.  But, I guess in reality Theif 2 isn’t exactly a high polygon-count game.  Character models are pretty bad by today’s standards and textures aren’t much better.  Lighting in the game is good, but that’s what the game really is based on.  Light and dark.

Otherwise, I’ve been somewhat adjusting to my new role at Quicken Loans.  I was moved to a newly created team, and no longer am a Windows systems engineer.  We basically support three main areas now:  Server monitoring, Altiris, and VMware virtualization.  We like to refer to this as “core infrastructure” pieces of the systems team.  I like to look at it mostly as a VMware or virtualization team, with the other two areas thrown in as a bonus.  I do have a VCP certification, so I suppose I could just consider myself a VMware systems engineer that also supports Altiris and Microsoft SCOM (and potentially Groundworks maybe in the future).

What else is going on lately…hmm… my son just got a Little Tikes Hummer H2 electric motorized vehicle for his birthday over the weekend.  I’m already scoping out how I can modify it.  First things I’ll probably end up doing is giving it some headlights and a horn.  Probably will do more later too.

That’s all for now…

Technorati Tags: altiris, cloudbook, deus ex, hummer h2, little tikes, quicken loans, scom, thief 2, VMware

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What do you do when you’re out and about with your ultra mobile PC, and there’s no wireless or copper connection available for you to plug into?  Well, ya tether it to your Blackberry phone and keep on browsing!

Actually, most modern mobile phones will allow you to do this.  Some over IR, or bluetooth, or in the case of the Cloudbook, with a USB cable.  You’ll need to check with your mobile phone manufacturer and carrier for specific information on how to use your mobile phone as a modem.

For myself, on the AT&T network, all that was required was a copy of the Blackberry communication drivers and a copy of  AT&T’s Communication Manger software.  Tell the software you have a USB connected Blackberry, and hit the connect button.  Presto!  Off and surfing the Internet.

AT&T uses the EDGE network (same one the iPhone uses), so it’s not as fast as some other carrier networks are.  But, the communication manager software does have this acceleration ability (using the Bytemobile client) which will scale back images to a lower quality so that you don’t have to download as much data for an image.  You’ll suffer some quality degradation on the image, but at least you don’t need to stuff as much data down the minimal pipe you’re browsing with.

This is perfect if you need to get on the Internet for some brief browsing, or are in a bind where you can’t get to a wired/wireless connection.  I’m posting this blog entry from the Blackberry connection, and a little earlier ordered a external hard drive enclosure over it.  It’s definitely usable even in today’s world of high bandwidth multimedia sites.

Technorati Tags: AT&T, blackberry, bytemobile, cloudbook, tethered modem

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A little over a week with XP on the Cloudbook now, and I’ve pretty much determined the major bottleneck on this system is the slow hard drive. I’ve loaded up a handful of older games (most recently Unreal Tournament and Star Wars Jedi Knight II) and the all seem to run really well. UT runs almost too fast depending on the settings you use. But in the case of Star Wars JKII, even though the game runs fine…loading it up is VERY slow.

So even though the processor isn’t as fast as a full-sized laptop, I don’t think it’s bad. Every time I noticed the OS being sluggish, it seems it’s related to some hard drive activity I’m waiting on. So how do you fix something like that? Well, I thought about replacing it with a faster model. But I don’t think I want to bother to go from 3600 RPM to a 4200 RPM drive. Doesn’t seem like a worth-while upgrade knowing that there’s 5400 RPM drives out there or soon to be out there available to the public. I’d like to get a faster 5400 RPM one, but I think I’ll wait until the Toshiba ones I’ve seen are in the market for a while and come down in price.

I was checking out a program called HDPARM that was mentioned in the Cloudbooker.com forums. I’m running Windows XP, so I had to find a port of it…which doesn’t seem to have all of the features implemented. But even what I could check out seemed like it was already set to the max. I might try out that power save feature (disable) again to see if it does provide any performance improvements. I’ll take any improvement at this point, even if it’s only 1-2 MB / sec average transfer improvement.

Well, aside from the normal XP tweaks to minimize the impact the OS has on the system, I think the only thing you can do is minimize what your virus/spyware scanner is doing to the system…and try to get a hold of a more robust defragment application like Raxco PerfectDisk or O&O Defrag.

These 3rd-party programs can greatly improve disk performance above and beyond what the built-in Windows defrag application can do by performing offline defrags of the drive for system files that can’t be moved while Windows is running, defrag the pagefile, and move files closer together on the drive depending on how recently they were accessed. The most used files are closest together on the front of the drive minimizing the seek time….improving drive performance. I’m trying out a copy of PerfectDisk on the Cloudbook now, and have noticed an improvement. But you have to let this thing run often (on every boot for page file, etc.) to have it be effective.

Even at 3600 RPM, the Cloudbook’s internal drive still manages an average of 20 MB/sec transfer rate, which still is decent compared to most USB thumb drives and memory cards out there. But it’s enough of a slowdown compared to a normal laptop/desktop hard drive that you’ll probably want to optimize as much as you can to keep your transfer rates as fast as possible.

Technorati Tags: 3600 RPM, cloudbook, defragment, everex hdtach, perfect disk

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