Quad Displays on a Latitude D620
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.
Posted in Tech | 
2 Comments »
