<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" For better or worse, it is a multitasking world we live in. And multiple monitors are uniquely useful for keeping track of numerous programs running simultaneously on your computer. Plenty of studies have pegged the productivity gained by adopting multiple monitors at anywhere from 9 to 50 percent (even if productivity for you means blasting opponents in StarCraft II while tweeting to your followers about how you totally pwned the Zerg). &amp;quot;Multiple monitors reduce [human] memory load by keeping more of your work in front of you,&amp;quot; says Cornell professor of ergonomics Alan Hedge, &amp;quot;so you don&amp;#039;t have to expend as much energy remembering where things are.&amp;quot; According to Hedge, multiple screens can also make us faster, saving us from the task of constantly searching through files and folders for information. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like having a book with larger \u00ADpages,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t have to turn the page as often, since you can fit more information on each page.&amp;quot; The analogy of a computer desktop to a physical one is apt, and, in my experience, as the size of my home office desk has increased, the screens on it have gotten bigger and more numerous. I now have two 24-inch screens\u2014one for always-on background applications such as e-mail, widgets and instant \u00ADmessaging, and another for whatever program I&amp;#039;m currently focusing on. And I am hardly an example of egregious excess; day traders routinely use three, four or even six screens simultaneously to watch their investments evaporate. Monitor Math Setting up multiple monitors isn&amp;#039;t particularly difficult, but depending on the type of computer you have and how many screens you want, the complexity can ramp up quickly and require all sorts of cards, adapters and dongles. It&amp;#039;s best to buy monitors that match the video outputs of your computer (see &amp;quot;What Video Plug Do You Need?&amp;quot;), but if your \u00ADcomputer and monitor require different plugs, you&amp;#039;ll have to choose from a constellation of adapters that provide a bridge between standards. Additionally, there are miniaturized versions of many of these connectors\u2014Apple is particularly fond of integrating mini video ports into its laptops\u2014which can require adapters just to mate them to their larger siblings (e.g., Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort).  So how many monitors can you plug into your computer? That largely depends on your graphics card. Most graphics cards can support two monitors\u2014for desktops, that typically means two independent screens can plug into the back of the PC. For laptops, the card can drive both the integrated display and one outside monitor. Some desktop computers allow you to add a second graphics card, which means you can connect four monitors. And there are gaming-\u00ADenthusiast computers that \u00ADsupport up to three graphics cards for a total of six monitor outputs\u2014but at a couple hundred dollars per card and per screen, that can quickly get expensive. Some higher-end graphics cards from AMD&amp;#039;s ATI division use a technology the company calls Eyefinity, which allows a single graphics card to support up to six monitors. Likewise, specialty manufacturer Matrox has cards that can support up to eight monitors.   Outside Help Some computers, however, can&amp;#039;t take a second graphics card\u2014smaller desktop machines don&amp;#039;t have extra PCI Express slots available on their motherboards, and laptops are engineered without a millimeter to spare inside, so you&amp;#039;re definitely not stuffing a big honkin&amp;#039; accessory like an extra graphics card in there. If you want to move beyond two monitors with these types of computers, you&amp;#039;ll need an external adapter from a company such as Matrox or Accell. These devices either act as external graphics processors or trick your machine&amp;#039;s internal graphics processor into thinking it&amp;#039;s attached to one extraordinarily long monitor, which the adapter&amp;#039;s software then chops up into individual screen &amp;quot;segments.&amp;quot;  One final way to pull off a multi-\u00ADmonitor setup is to use equipment compatible with the DisplayLink \u00ADstandard. DisplayLink gear sends a second-\u00ADmonitor video stream over USB or wireless USB. The video is then picked up on the other end by a television or monitor with a built-in graphics processor or any other video screen plugged into a dongle that does the processing itself. It&amp;#039;s a nifty trick, but it requires quite a bit of compression and uses low-end processors to \u00ADrender the video\u2014which, in my experience, works well with static screens but can murder the quality of a good \u00ADvideo stream. The Art of Arrangement Regardless of how you attach your extra screens, you&amp;#039;re still going to have to do a bit of software tinkering after you&amp;#039;ve plugged them into your computer. Modern operating systems such as Microsoft&amp;#039;s Windows 7 and Apple&amp;#039;s OS X Snow Leopard have made setup much easier than it used to be, but all sorts of craziness can still go on when you plug in an extra display. Sometimes your monitor shows up, sometimes it doesn&amp;#039;t. Both Windows and OS X have a way for users to force the computer to find any connected monitors\u2014in Win 7, it&amp;#039;s under the Control Panel category Change Screen Resolution; in Snow Leopard, it&amp;#039;s a button called Detect Displays under the Displays submenu of System Preferences. Once your computer has found the displays, it&amp;#039;s up to you to orient them. Both OSs allow you to drag and drop each monitor to match how it is placed physically on your desktop. Digital connections through DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort should automatically detect the resolution of your new monitor, but connections through an analog VGA cable may require you to set the resolution manually. For best performance, you generally want to set to the highest resolution possible on your monitor\u2014and, unless you have a reason to do it differently, keep the refresh rate set to 60 Hz, which is the standard for U.S. monitors and TVs. Finally, both OSs allow you to designate a primary screen, where your taskbar and system tray will reside; any other screen will play second fiddle. In Windows, select the icon for your main screen in the Change Screen Resolution section of Control Panel, then check off the &amp;quot;Make this my primary monitor&amp;quot; box. In OS X, under the Displays submenu in System Preferences, you&amp;#039;ll see that one of the screen icons will have a white bar across the top. Grab that bar and drag it to the monitor you want as your main display. Ergonomics expert Hedge suggests setting up your main monitor to match your dominant eye. (Righties will probably want to make the right monitor the main one. Lefties? Vice versa). Use your screens to keep organized\u2014dedicate individual programs to primary or secondary screens based on importance. So how do you determine if your extra monitors have made you more productive? I&amp;#039;m no academic, but I propose this simple experiment to assess the \u00ADvalue of a multiscreen setup in your home: After you&amp;#039;ve installed an extra monitor, use it for a few weeks, then take it away. Miss the extra real estate? I figured you would. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/how-to/a11710/how-to-set-up-multiple-monitors/>