Thanks Susannah Just what I need to know. Any related reports (brand/type please) from for instance toshiba, compaq, sony, ..........?
I honestly don't know if there is anything equivalent to this one from another brand. My husband got issued about 5 computers from his job and this is one of the older ones (they just issue new ones and never ask for the old ones back). Can't beat free for a computer! I forgot to add a small detail, but it's not a big deal. There really aren't the ports on the laptop to drive 2 monitors at once, but the docking station for it has the ports you need, so you'd need to get the docking station and run it docked for the 2 monitors. The docking station has a normal montior port, an S-video port, and a DVI port. When I right click on the background in Windows and select properties, I can go to the settings tab and just let it know I've got 2 monitors. My husband was saying he thinks his Dell laptop (it's a little newer) has the ports to run both monitors on the laptop itself, although not 2 regular monitor ports, one would be a regular monitor port, another one something like S-video. I can check on that later this weekend for you. It seems like my Dell many years ago (2001) that I had at my engineering job would also do 2 monitors when it was docked but I can't recall for sure. They always bought us design engineers top of the line laptops that had great capabilities.
I highly recommend the Matrox TripleHeadtoGo. It's about the size of a deck of cards, so easy to take with you. I've been using it with one of my laptops for over a year now. Works on just about any laptop, so you don't need to go hunting for some esoteric laptop that's specially configured with two external monitor ports.
Susannah So am I understanding you correcetly, the laptop is running its own monitor and 2 external monitors. 3 in total?
No, it only does 2 different displays at once. That can be the laptop monitor and an external monitor or 2 external monitors (one must be VGA, one must be S-video). You can still keep the laptop monitor on at the same time that you are using 2 external monitors, but it's going to be a repeat of one of those monitors, not a separate display. So, my husband's laptop is a Dell Latitude D810 which is about 2 1/2 years old. It has a VGA and an S-video port. Both will drive external monitors, although it's not that normal for a monitor to have an S-video port, you might have to look specifically for that. He hooked it up for me to 2 separate external monitors and showed me, and then showed me that text gets fuzzy on an S-video display (since it's really a standard meant for television). I also found this that might work for you, it's an external video card you connect to one of your USB ports, it then connects to a VGA monitor. It provides a unique display, not just a repeat. They also have ones that are USB to DVI. They're cheap: http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oid=198588&om_keycode=4