Computer Question

You need a video card with 2 outputs for dual display.

Geek boy is right. It's all about the video card.

and its not really doing to different things. they have one program open and it is positioned on one monitor, and another program is positioned on the other. think of it as just one really wide monitor with different windows open.

That sounds like what I need. I found a monitor cable that splits into two down in one of the computer labs here at school. It allows me to hook the two monitors up to the single output on the back of the computer. I guess now I need to look into video cards. Thanks for the help.

You wouldn't want a video cable that spits into 2. You just want a cable for each in put out put.

In general the answer is that you can't unless it was designed to dual screen. If it has two video cards in it, then you can for sure dual screen. If it has one video card with the same type of port on it twice, it can dual screen. Some video cards have a single port and come with a Y cable as you mentioned but the card is specially designed to run two individual monitors off of a Y cable, if you just do that with a normal video card, you'll get the same stuff on both screens like a mirror.\r \r If it's a laptop, you can usually hook up a monitor to the external video port and run dual screens , one being the laptop screen and one being the monitor.\r \r So really you need to do some research to find out the specs on the video card in your system before this question can be answered.\r \r

Not sure what is in it. I believe the situation I am in now is that I can hook up two monitors with the splitter but the same screen will be on both monitors. I need to find out what is inside but I am sure since the school system buys from the lowest bidder, that I don't have the right video card. It is a Dell desktop. Now I just need to figure out what is inside.

we have these at work... PM me if you still can't figure this out by Monday and I will ask my \"people\"

At work I have two (flatscreen) monitors. The video card in my desktop has two outputs, one digital and one analog. I'm running Windows XP, which I'm told can support up to nine monitors if you have the right video card(s).\r It sort of treats the two monitors as one big wide one because you can drag stuff from one monitor to another or spread a program window where it covers both monitors at once. But, it also knows that they are separate, because if you click the icon to make a software window full screen, it only fills up one of the monitors. You can also set the resolution separately such as having one monitor at 1024 x 760 and the other at 800 x 600.