Like us, you’ve probably found that a single screen doesn’t cut it anymore.
Here are two apps that will help you make the most of your multi-mon setup
If you’re tired of using third-party photo-editing applications to get your desktop wallpaper to span multiple displays, you’re in luck. The 15-day trial of DisplayFusion (www.binaryfortress.com) allows you to customize every last inch of your desktop, and the $10 pro version opens up access to Flickr and wallpaper randomization modes.
The program’s main screen is the meat of the application. From here, you can set up a single wallpaper that spans any number of displays, or you can individualize each monitor with a different wallpaper: perhaps a loving portrait of your family alongside your favorite sports team (or sports team’s cheerleading squad).
Randomizing your desktops’ wallpapers is as easy as clicking a button. The program will swap your wallpapers in and out up to once a day. We recommend you not set them to change every minute unless you want to turn your desktop into a screensaver of sorts.
DisplayFusion is unique in its ability to pull down images from any Flickr user and make them into wallpapers. It’s a great feature for the photography enthusiast, as you can then use the application to create a rotating slide show of wallpapers based on everything you upload to your account.
Or you can aim one step higher. Using a series of keywords and group filters, you can turn your wallpaper into an endless stream of new images centered on your specific interests. It’s a perfect solution if you’re tired of the same ol’, same ol’.
Consider UltraMon (www.realtimesoft.com) the jack-of-all-trades for your desktop interface. While it doesn’t offer as much wallpaper functionality as DisplayFusion, it includes a plethora of other desktop features. A 30-day trial lets you try the app out, after which you have to pay $40 for the full version of the program, which includes a year’s worth of updates.
UltraMon builds a ton of functionality into its minimal interface. The program adds additional buttons to the top of your windows that allow you switch a window from one monitor to another without having to drag it over yourself. A second button lets you span your current window across all of your displays. You can also assign these commands—and a host of others— to individual hotkey combinations through UltraMon’s extensive options menu. And you can opt to have Ultra- Mon regulate your windows’ dimensions when moving between displays of different resolutions.
One of the more frustrating issues for multi-monitor users is that it’s impossible to make Windows screensavers run on more than one display at once. You can certainly download multi-monitor-friendly screensavers, but the ones that come packaged with Windows XP work on only one display—unless you have UltraMon, that is.
The utility not only lets you run separate instances of your screensaver across all of your displays but also allows you to assign a different screensaver to each display. Balance out a slide show of your college days with a good ol’ Windows logo.
Comments are closed on this article
AntiJohnny
May 26, 2009 at 9:19am
Thanks for posting this. I know it's nearly a year old, but i just referred to it again. Good info.
Antilogic81
September 07, 2008 at 10:04pm
Great Article, I decided to go and do some more looking into panel types (Newegg results show there are more than the three mentioned here and I started finding myself asking questions)
I think some of us may find this website very informative
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles.htm
Has a lot of info...almost too much info, and it's updated often so I hear.
SteveCamper
September 05, 2008 at 9:48am
The only thing I don't like about the article is that you don't put up a comparison grid between monitors. You have to go into each monitor review and look at the ranking results. An even cooler way would be to rank the importance of each feature from 1 to 10 and then rank each monitor from 1 to 10 in each feature set. Crank the numbers and get a final rank across the 10 monitors. Then if you review more you can drop them into your ranking like you do with your zero point PC specs...
Just a thought...
TheMurph
September 05, 2008 at 10:41am
We can't do that, as all of the displays have to be evaluated against the entirety of displays we've tested. We can't just give a 1-10 verdict based on the clumping of this feature, we have to assign displays verdicts that reflect their placement in the overcall monitor category.
hogkill
September 05, 2008 at 6:42am
This is a really informative article, but one thing I'm a bit torn on is the section on contrast ratio.
"Don’t pay attention to contrast ratios: They’re all hype, as each
display manufacturer will engineer its own testing situation, so
there’s no basis for meaningful comparison."I see where you're coming from saying that manufacturer's can impact the numbers depending on how they measure contrast ratio, but aside from that I think most experts would agree that the contrast ratio is the most important aspect of a display. It far outweighs resolution and even correct colour when it comes to picture quality. This is because the details for dark scenes or shadowed areas cannot be seen at all if your monitor has a poor contrast ratio. I can think of a couple shows and movies where you probably wouldn't have the slightest clue what was going on if your contrast wasn't at least 1000:1.
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