Primary/Second Monitor followup

[Chris Curzon]

We are planning on replacing our laptop with a new laptop (from Dell)
running XP and Office for Small Business.

We want to set up PPT to operate with a primary/secondary monitor
configuration, so that the audience can view only the slides while the
presenter can view the whole presentation.

I have been told by a Dell representative that none of their laptops permit
this. Apparently, there must be a video card for each monitor and since
there is only one video card in a laptop, then the Video Out signal will
always be the same as the signal that drives the screen.

BUT, it was suggested that it may be possible to connect a video card to the
USB port and then configure PPT to recognize that video card as a secondary
monitor. Has anyone done this kind of thing? Can you advise me?

Thanks in advance. And thanks to Taj Simmons for his previous answer. I
think were making progress here!

-- Chris Curzon

 

[Chirag]

I have been using Dell Latitude D800 that has NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 Go
graphic card. This laptop has the dual-monitor support (primary/secondary
monitor configuration). The video out can be configured to be independent of
the laptop screen.

If your laptop does not support dual-monitors, you might want to use PCMCIA
graphic cards. Some of the manufacturers are listed at
http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow_faq.html

- Chirag

PowerShow - View multiple shows simultaneously
http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow.html