Dual monitor help

[Antipathy]

I got a second monitor (19 inch widescreen, meh) for this Christmas, and got it working today - had to buy another DVI-to-VGA adapter. It works decently, the color world is kinda stale but it's pretty good at watching movies and stuff. However there is some unclear business:

1. Is there a way to have different wallpapers on the monitors?

2. Can I simply install the other monitor's drivers without messing up anything?

3. When running non-FPS (games with visible cursors, such as RTS's), I can't move the cursor to the other monitor. Alt-tabbing minimizes the game which is exactly what I don't want to happen. Can I use the other monitor while playing games?

Thanks in advance.

[jrgp]

1. There might be a program that does it, otherwise paste both desired wallpapers into an image the size of both mon's resolutions added together and set that as the background.

2. Possibly.

3. Almost definitely no. Besides, it's more of a "feature" than a drawback since your mouse won't accidentally slide over while you're playing.

[Graham]

1. Yes, Display Fusion.

2. More than likely yeah

3. No.

[Wormdundee]

If you're using dual monitors and you don't have UltraMon, you're doing it wrong.

[pavliko]

hehe hi i have dual monitor too.
well
1. Diffrent wallpapers? didnt find it anywhere
2. Ofcours...no problems but set up some settings like resolution and stuff
3. well i played some none fps games like rts and yeh when i move the cursor to the second minotor it just goes to he second monitor and wont take any effect by moving the camera in the game..well i use the up,down,left,right buttens because of that :\

[Antipathy]

Alright, thanks for the help.

After using the second monitor now for some time, I haven't seen much advantage over single monitor use. Sure, you can keep your Messenger windows and maybe Winamp on the other monitor, but it's not like you can concetrate on both monitors at once - in the end changing your focus from monitor to the other takes the exact same time as opening the window from the tray. On the other hand, Left 4 Dead crashing has become less irritating now that I can alt-tab to an open window on the second monitor and drag it around on the frozen monitor to "clean" the frozen image. Before that, I always had to boot the computer.

Any tips on how you should use your second monitor?

[pavliko]

frozen images..that sux didnt find anything about it..
but its cool like 1 monitor is for mirc ad second is firefox and soldat xD.

[bja888]

3. When running non-FPS (games with visible cursors, such as RTS's), I can't move the cursor to the other monitor. Alt-tabbing minimizes the game which is exactly what I don't want to happen. Can I use the other monitor while playing games?

That all depends on how they programmed the game. Most games will minimize as soon as it looses focus. Your best bet is to run in windowed mode. Yet again, another option controlled by the game.