Dual monitor question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael C
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Michael C

A customer wants to run 2 monitor off the one computer. One will be the
standard computer monitor while the other will show a power point
presentation all day and night. Is it possible to do this without the mouse
being able to go onto the other screen or applications accidentally being
dragged there or messageboxes appearing there?

Thanks (I presume the answer is that they really need 2 PCs)
Michael Culley
 
Michael C said:
A customer wants to run 2 monitor off the one computer. One will be the
standard computer monitor while the other will show a power point
presentation all day and night. Is it possible to do this without the mouse
being able to go onto the other screen or applications accidentally being
dragged there or messageboxes appearing there?
Click to expand...

Using the correct software (and a little time) you can dictate which
application run on which screen, but I don't know that you could stop the
mouse from entering the second screen, or things from being dragged
accidentally into the second screen.

However to run the same powerpoint presentation all day long would not
require much processing power or memory etc, so why not consider an old
second hand PC - it would be quiet, low power and cheap. Probably even an
old 486 or early pentium 1, 2 or 3 would do the job - you wouldn't need
windows XP or anything up-to-date if that is really all the PC has to do!
 
With the correct software, supplied with a dual monitor card, you can have a
specific app run on the monitor of your choice. You can also have msg boxes
only show on the screen on which the app is running
 
DaveW said:
Yes, indeed, you need two computers.
Click to expand...

Not at all. It's relatively simple to have two totally
separate displays. It is only slightly more complex to have
the two displays act as a single display (the mouse, and
various applications, can access any part of either
display).
 
Floyd L. Davidson said:
Not at all. It's relatively simple to have two totally
separate displays. It is only slightly more complex to have
the two displays act as a single display (the mouse, and
various applications, can access any part of either
display).
Click to expand...

Can you explain more?

Michael
 
Michael C said:
Can you explain more?
Click to expand...

That is all true, *if* you are using an X server.

Which means virtually any for of unix (Solaris, Linux, BSD, OSX,
etc) does it with ease. I don't know what is available from
Microsoft.
 
Floyd L. Davidson said:
That is all true, *if* you are using an X server.

Which means virtually any for of unix (Solaris, Linux, BSD, OSX,
etc) does it with ease. I don't know what is available from
Microsoft.
Click to expand...

What part of me asking if it was possible to run Power Point didn't you
understand? :-)

Michael
 
Michael C said:
What part of me asking if it was possible to run Power Point didn't you
understand? :-)
Click to expand...

Your irrational limitations are not technical impediments.
 
Floyd L. Davidson said:
Your irrational limitations are not technical impediments.
Click to expand...

This is for a constumer who is a dentist. She has several niche market apps
2 of which I know are written in MS Visual Basic. She and all of her staff
have good knowledge of windows and would need to be retrained to use linux.
It's simply not an option.

Michael
 
Michael C said:
This is for a constumer who is a dentist. She has several niche market apps
2 of which I know are written in MS Visual Basic. She and all of her staff
have good knowledge of windows and would need to be retrained to use linux.
It's simply not an option.
Click to expand...

That wasn't the question though. The point is that support for
two monitors is relatively easy to do to.

As to Linux or some other non-Windows system being "not an
option", it appears to me that is an irrational limitation of
the consultant, not the customer.

Just for starters, if it can be done using an X server I'll be
amazed to hear that Windows cannot also do it...

Second, there are a variety of ways to host Windows apps on
different platforms that might well provide better
functionality, not to mention security and stability.
 
Floyd L. Davidson said:
As to Linux or some other non-Windows system being "not an
option", it appears to me that is an irrational limitation of
the consultant, not the customer.
Click to expand...

Right. Just the fact that the customer wants XP because they know XP is
enough on it's own (I get paid to do what they want) but once you factor in
the time I would spend swapping over to linux (easily thousand of dollars in
time before I started writing drivers for their dental camera and digital
xray) it would be extremely irrational of me to try.
Just for starters, if it can be done using an X server I'll be
amazed to hear that Windows cannot also do it...
Click to expand...

All I need to know is that it I'm not missing some really obvious way to do
it, which I think this newsgroup has answered.
Second, there are a variety of ways to host Windows apps on
different platforms that might well provide better
functionality, not to mention security and stability.
Click to expand...

This is something that I dislike. If I'm going to run windows apps then I
think it's best to run a windows machine, apple apps on an apple machine
etc. I've seen people running windows apps on different platforms and it
doesn't work that well, besides there being no point to it.

Michael
 
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