[Noisebridge-discuss] Multiple monitors attached to a Laptop/Macbook

[Rubin Abdi]

As stated by others, the duelhead stuff sucks.

USB video cards are neat but you're still limited by the bandwidth of 
your USB ports (buy a good USB hub if you do this). If you're doing 
stuff like browsing the web, email, working on code, etc, this'll be a 
good solution. I'm not too sure how well they deal with 30fps video, and 
I wouldn't recommend playing video games unless you pick up one of the 
really expensive USB video cards with the extra required external power 
supply.

Depending on your needs and resources, might I suggest taking a look at 
Synergy...

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

It's an open source server/client thing. You run two machines with 
monitors attached, stick the monitors next to each other. Configure the 
server with the placements of each monitor, and run the software. When 
your mouse on the primary display hits an edge next to another display, 
Synergy swaps control of your mouse and keyboard over to the other 
machine. It works surprisingly well, even over wifi, and you get the 
extra processing power of the other machine. The downsides are you don't 
actual have a real extended desktop and it doesn't come with an easy 
solution for clipboard buffer.

At home my setup is a Macbook Pro, 24" glossy LCD, and then a ThinkPad 
T41 running Debian Lenny through Synergy when the machine isn't out on 
loan. The only problem I have with all that is running out of desk space.

-- 
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net