Windows only: Moving your mouse cursor across multiple monitors can be a long haul, especially in triple- and quad-monitor setups. Snap your mouse from screen to screen instead with keyboard shortcuts. Multi-Monitor Mouse is a small application which, when triggered by a keyboard combination, snaps your mouse cursor to the next monitor in your multi-monitor setup. You can specify whether the mouse jump should be relative—having the cursor placed in the same relative position on the new monitor—or in the centre of the screen. You can also specify the order of monitors the mouse will leap to, if sequential’s not your thing. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but once you get the hang of this app, it’s hard to imagine dragging your mouse across 3,000+ pixels again. Multi-Monitor Mouse is freeware, Windows only. Multi-Monitor Mouse
Windows only: If you’re looking for a lightweight tool for compartmentalising space on your monitor and need support for multiple screens, MaxTo lets you subdivide to your heart’s content. Upon first running MaxTo, each of your monitors is grayed out and a several small buttons are displayed. Using the buttons, you can divide each screen horizontally or vertically and grab the dividing bar to resize the space. Each space can then be further divided as small as you desire. The grey background is slightly transparent, which makes it a breeze to line up the dividers bars with existing window sizes (like when you’ve got your browser windows just so) or wallpaper details. You get five basic templates you can load on a per-monitor-basis for quickly sizing windows to common layouts without having to fuss with the settings. Once you’ve arrived at a happy layout and save your settings, from then on any window maximised in that portion of the grid you’ve created will be sized to fit.
Windows only: MultiPhotoQuotes is a feature packed replacement for the basic My Pictures Slideshow screensaver included with Windows. If you’re running a multi-monitor setup, your favourite feature in MultiPhotoQuotes will definitely be the support for your extra screen space. The basic My Pictures screensaver will only put one picture on a single screen at any given time, which even on a small multi-monitor setup leaves a lot of empty space. MultiPhotoQuotes fills the entire available screen space with a grid of photos. If you like a good quotable every now and then, you can keep the quotes feature on to randomly sprinkle quotes from the included quote books.
One of the reasons I’ve always resisted a multiple-monitor setup is that the work habits which result wouldn’t translate readily to notebook use and I spend so much time on the road. Lenovo’s new dual-screen W700ds notebook (which the company rather pretentiously calls a “mobile workstation”) partly overcomes that objection by offering a second slide-out 10.6 inch screen behind the main 17 inch display. Check out the video demonstration above to see how it works. There’s some nice features here (including a built-in CF reader and a healthy 5 USB ports), though the weight would be an issue and at $8,199 for the cheapest model, I won’t be buying one any time soon. Do you think we’ll see more dual-screen notebooks, or is this a very specialised niche?
Last week we asked you where you found wallpaper to customise multiple monitor setups, you responded and we rounded up your favourite sites to help share the high resolution goodness! Read on for the dirt.
Windows only: Free application VirtualScreenMaximizer maximises any window to every available pixel on your multi-monitor setup. Rather than expanding windows across all monitors, the default Windows behaviour maximises windows only on the current monitor. With VirtualScreenMaximizer, just hit the customizable keyboard shortcut (which you set by right-clicking the system tray icon and selecting Config) to go truly fullscreen. You’d think the app would only work on multi-monitor setups, but it actually performs an interesting function even for single monitors: When you invoke the maximize shortcut, VSM maximises the app to the full size of the monitor, covering your Windows taskbar and hiding the window titlebar so all you see is the interior of the window. This is an app that performs one simple task, but if it’s something you’ve been looking for, it’s a great option. VirtualScreenMaximizer is freeware, Windows only, requires .NET 2.0. VirtualScreenMaximizer [via gHacks]
Running a screensaver on multiple monitors can be a tricky affair. The default Windows screensavers work just fine with multiple monitors, but you didn’t install dual 22″ wide screens at your workstation to blow away your coworkers with the expansiveness of your scrolling marque text messages. Fortunately there are several solutions to dealing with the quirkiness of Windows and multi-monitor screensavers.
