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April 28, 2008

Okay, Windows gurus ()

by fluffy at 9:48 AM
How do I make XP not be retarded about multiple monitors and hotplugging thereof? Specifically, if I undock my laptop, use it standalone for a few days, then redock it, it's completely forgotten about the external monitor and I have to go through the whole configuration process all over again (which is fairly annoying). On the Mac, when you plug in an external monitor it remembers the monitor and immediately reconfigures your displays to be exactly as they were the last time it saw this setup. Are there any helper-type apps to get that sort of thing on Windows?

Also, I am somewhat less than impressed with the way it does wallpaper on multiple monitors, namely how it's sized to fit the primary display - so if I make the laptop's screen primary, my wallpaper is in a 1280x800 "window" on my nice big 1920x1200 monitor, and if the external monitor is primary, the same wallpaper gets cropped on the indernal screen. The Mac lets you just put different wallpapers on each monitor, and if you have the same on both then it gets sized appropriately for each one. So far all the workarounds I see involve enabling active desktop or other such hacks, and judging by the monitor profile thing that'd just lead to an even bigger world of hurt every morning when I redock my laptop. So I'm just using a simple tiled image instead. (Borrowed, incidentally, from MacOS.)

Comments

#10799 04/28/2008 10:41 am Windows
That's science fiction talk!!!!

Seriously...I've never been able to get Windows to be non-stupid about multiple monitors.
#10800 04/28/2008 12:14 pm
http://realtimesoft.com/ultramon/ is what most people use for desktop-type things. I don't use a wallpaper at work so it's not really a concern I have. It's not free.

As for desktop management, all of the ThinkPads have a thing called "Presentation Director" (which is terrible) and I think nVidia has its own thing to handle different display configuration profiles. Presentation Director can also handle changing profiles when you dock, but I'm not sure if nVidia has anything that can figure that out. You use Vaios at work, right? Is it possible that Sony has some software for it that you can download from their site?

You just reminded me to go reply to your last Windows post. Going there now to talk about that stuff...
#10802 04/28/2008 12:59 pm
Yeah, OS X kicks Windows ass in that department. It's really no comparison either and Windows is a bitch to always reset up every time. OS X just works and works great. That's one of many reasons I'm glad my laptop is now a Macbook Pro. Good luck with that.
#10804 04/28/2008 01:20 pm
The Vaio has the nVidia Control Panel which doesn't appear to have any sort of profile management. I always jsut end up configuring the monitors via the normal Windows display control panel, anyway.