Sidekick Monitor for Laptop
 

Hey, Tech Peoples of TFP...

I love hypothetical situations. Today's: Let's say I'm in a pretty important management position in a pretty hectic job where I'm stuck in a really crappy place but need to be super productive with various reports and spreadsheets. And now let's say I came to the conclusion that I need a secondary flat screen monitor to run next to my laptop to extend the Windows desktop to assist in the massive amounts of clerical cat herding I engage in.

All the monitor needs to do is handle Word/Excel and a little sand. Size should be around 18" or so. What type of monitor would you kids recommend? Last year's LCD? And how cheap can I go? $150? The thing is probably going to be left behind when I'm done with this job. Whatever you can carry.

Thanks. I'm currently nosing around NewEgg and BestBuy online.

I don't know what the saving throw vs sand is for a Lcd but any old LCD will do. Make sure it has an hdmi to VGA adapter or if the cable can be changed out for an older style Vga cable.

Can your laptop handle a second LCD? Most external VGA ports are only made to switch the viewing panel from the laptop to the external
LCD. I'd steal a LCD from somewhere else before I bought one. Try and hook it up and tell it to extend the desktop to the second LCD.

If it doesn't work, get a USB to VGA adapter. They are like $60 at best buy an will work for what you need.

This will work for your laptop and will add a second vga port for your use. I'm thinking you will need this, but it all depends on your laptop.

I'm a fan of Acer LCDs, but really any will do for a "throwaway" LCD. $150 will buy you a 20' or less on newegg, watch their daily deals.

I dock to an external all the time, so I can use a real keyboard and have a numeric keypad. I hate the feel of laptop keyboards, and especially hate doing numbers work without a number keypad, which my 13" laptop doesn't have. Make it easy on yourself. You should be able to get a windows keyboard for under $15 and a mouse for under $10. I think I remember seeing a 22" Dell on Buy.com for about $150 not too long ago. Or this Buy.com - Acer V193W EJbm 19" LCD Monitor from today.
I use a MacBook Pro that will let me use the external either in place of the laptop display or as a larger desktop spanning both screens. Windows should be able to do this also, right??
I just use the external. When I try using both, I keep losing track of where the cursor is.

Lindy

I bought my daughter an Asus 22" for use with her Powerbook just under 2 years ago. Great resolution, she's even got HD cable hooked to it. The only negative is the sound (but she has external speakers). It beats out some of the more expensive monitors as far as quality goes.

Newegg.com - Asus VE198D 19" LED BackLight LCD Monitor 250cd/m2 10,000,000:1

I have a 17" Samsung flatscreen as my secondary to a tower... and I have no issues with it. I would listen to Edens advice on the tech setup just to make sure your laptop can compute what you are asking it to do.

I have an Acer H213H which is a 21.5" that's currently listed on Tiger Direct for $159 and I paid $150 for at NewEgg about a year and a half ago. I've been happy with that monitor. The key point is to make sure your laptop can run two displays and that plugging in a monitor in the external connector doesn't switch off the laptop display.

I would be surprised if that is the case, I'm currently playing around with an 11 year old laptop and it has the ability to select between the 3 following screen configurations : main lcd, external vga port and both at the same time (default there is clone), but you are right about testing before spending money.

Yours
ZB

Yeah, I'm running a Toshiba Satellite laptop w/ AMD Turion and ATI Radeon 1250. According to the "Catalyst Control Center," I can run dual monitors, both showing the same image (such as when I hooked it up to the TeeVee to watch movies) and as a desktop extension. Standard 15-pin trapezoid analog VGA port complete with little oblate rectangle monitor icon. I'll check out Acer LCD monitors. Anybody other advice/recommendations?

Thoughts on this $99 whiz-bang 20" LCD?

NewEgg's DotW. $99 with free shipping.

Pulling the trigger on that won't be hard.

You have to have power, and make sure it is a normal resolution for the OS you have. Are you using it outdoors in the Sun? If you are really dealing with lots of sand, getting one with an internal conformal coating would prevent dust & sand from contacting the electrical components.

Power?! ...how am I posting on TFP?! Yeah, the monitor has to be plugged in as well.

Hey, it's not that bad. It's not really any more nasty than a construction site trailer.

Dude, you're overthinking this. If it's a disposable monitor, you're good with just about anything. Get the $99 dealie. If it dies before you're done, you warranty that bitch and get another. If not, you're good.

3 years parts and labor, my man. If it's just for a desert beater, who cares about the quality?

Shit, I don't know. I just figured I'd ask, bro. I mean, I grew up on MS DOS 5.0 and kinda lost my nerd status around Windows 95.

You kids that spend every waking moment fapping to motherboards and monitors should have advice ready to copypasta for me.