[dulipishi]

Hi:
I am setting up my new office and need your advice as to how
best to set it up - i.e., what connections to use to maximize the 2 lcd
displays I have. From a previous post, I know that I cannot have a MBP
drive 2 external displays.

I have
1) 2 Dell 19" lcds
2) a mac mini (which I also believe cannot drive 2 external monitors)
3) a MBP (same problem)
4) a windows machine with a graphics card which can drive 2 external monitors.

I also have an icurve to keep the MBP on.

How would you set up the machines ?
I would ideally like desktop spanning rather than mirroring.

I do have an IOGear 4-port KVM that can take in 4 different machines but
can only display out to one display.

Thanks!

[romeosc]

Christopher Breen's response in MacWorld!


Is it possible to use both a 30” and 23” Apple Cinema Display monitors with a 17” MacBook Pro?



Currently, no. Although you can connect Apple’s 30” display to your MacBook you need another video card to drive an additional monitor. You could do this with an older PowerBook via its PC Card slot and a device such as VillageTronic’s VTBook and Digital Tigers’ SideCar Mac.


Apple has chosen to look toward the future with its MacBook Pro and has replaced the now-old-tech PC Card slot with the faster, new-tech ExpressCard/34 slot. Regrettably, there are precious few ExpressCards out there and no ExpressCard video cards. A Digital Tigers representative tells me that they’ll offer an ExpressCard version of the SideCar in the fall.

[iREZ]

is this really an issue?...you have three computers (2 of which need a monitor) and you have two monitors. one monitor for the mac mini, one monitor for the pc, and and the mbp has a built in. i dont see the reason to leave a computer in the dark so you could screen span.

if you NEED to screen span..im almost certain the dell displays you have has both a vga and dvi slot each (controlled by a button on the front of the display). if this is the case, plug you mac mini (via dvi) to one of the displays and connect your pc (via vga) to the same monitor (so now you should have one monitor with both your mac mini and your pc plugged into it, each occupying the dvi and vga slots respectively). then plug your macbook to the second monitor (via dvi) and plug your pc computer to the second monitor as well (via vga) just like you did with the first display. so now when the monitors are in dvi mode, you could use your mini with a solo screen and your mbp with screen spanning, and if you want to fire up your pc...just press the buttons to switch the monitors from dvi to vga and voila...two screens dedicated to your pc.