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How to get more screen space for less money

Have you ever wished you had a bigger monitor, but the prices just are too much? For those of you with Windows 98 or Windows 2000, there is another option that will provide you with a much expanded desktop for a fairly frugal investment. It's called multi-monitor, and it allows you to use multiple monitors together as one large desktop (or in other ways to be discussed later).

Hardware

First, what do you need to do this magic? The first thing is at least two monitors. Do you have an old 14" or 15" monitor around somewhere? Pull it out and put it to work. The next step is a way to hook those two or more monitors up to the computer. For this you need any of the following options (for 2 monitors):

• 2 multi-monitor supported PCI graphics cards
• 1 supported PCI graphics card and 1 supported AGP graphics card
• 1 dual-head graphics card (Matrox G400 dual head)
• Supported on-board graphics and a supported PCI graphics card

Software

This is the easy part. You need Windows 98 or Windows 2000, the correct drivers for each graphics card and that is it! Note that some manufacturers have different drivers for use in a multi-monitor arrangement than when using only one monitor. Check with their website.