I run my main monitor at 1280x1024x16 bit colour.  The HP monitor switched down to 256 colour mode if I tried running at that resolution, so I reduced it to 1153x864x16 bit colour.

The results were fantastic.  I happily dragged windows from one monitor to another.  I kept reference material up on the HP monitor while I worked on the main screen. In many cases it was as good as having two computers.  In some ways it was actually better than having two computers because I didn't have to copy or share information between two systems; this was still one computer.

I decided that, if two monitors were better than one, it stood to reason that three would be even better.  I found another old 17 inch HP Ergo 1280 monitor and added it along with a Matrox Millennium PCI video card.  Again, it came up flawlessly with no fuss at all.

And I was in heaven!  I had increased my screen real estate from about 160 square inches to about 400 square inches.  In terms of pixels, I had gone from 1.3 million pixels to 3.3 million.

But things were not perfect.  Some aspects of working with multiple monitors are...well...awkward.

Applications open on the monitor they were on when last closed. I usually found this to be a good thing, but not always.  I sometimes opened programs and found myself looking around on the monitors to find where they were.

When using a remote control package such as VNC or Remote Administrator to access my computer, if an application opened on one of the secondary monitors, I couldn't see it, since the remote control package only sees what's on the main video card. 

If you tend to use the mouse a lot, multiple monitors can greatly increase the mileage on your rodent.  With three monitors to drag the mouse across, I found it much more tedious.

There were other things I found to be a bit of a pain or cosmetically messy.  For example, 

Windows does not replicate the task bar to additional monitors.  While you can use the Alt-Tab method of switching between applications, if you prefer to use the buttons on the taskbar, you always have to move the mouse back to the main monitor.  Another example was dragging an almost-full-screen window from my high-resolution monitor to a lower resolution monitor.  I ended up having to resize the window manually so I could see everything.

Still, the benefits of a multi-monitor configuration far outweighed the inconveniences.

Realtime Soft has a program called UltraMon which is designed specifically to deal with multiple monitors.  I decided to give it a try.  The version I am using is 2.1. I quickly decided that UltraMon is a must have utility when working with multiple monitors.

UltraMon optionally provides a taskbar on each monitor.  By default, only those applications appearing on a monitor will show up on its taskbar.  No matter what taskbar you access, you always know that when you click a button on the taskbar, the application will be on that monitor when it comes to the foreground. It also means you can tell at a glance what applications are running where, even if they are minimized or obscured by other windows.  If you prefer, you can have all taskbar buttons appear on all taskbars.

With UltraMon, application title bars sport additional buttons.  These buttons are placed near the top-right corner and allow you to take advantage of multiple-monitor features.

One button expands an application window to the entire desktop, spread across all monitors.  This may be a great feature if you are using monitors with virtually no bezel and the monitors are right beside each other, but on a regular monitor, I found the space between the actual display images to be problematic.

While you can still drag windows around with the mouse, a second button allows you to move the application window to another monitor.  With two monitors, this is a one-click operation.  If you have more than two monitors, it is a two-click operation, the first bringing up a menu that allows you to select the destination monitor.

UltraMon can get around the problem of applications opening on the monitor they were on when last closed.  It adds a tab to the Properties dialog box for shortcuts.  You can set a shortcut to open the application on a specific monitor, and even specify the position on that monitor.  You can even have the specified monitor change resolution and colour depth while the application is loaded and restore the original settings automatically when the app closes.

Display Profiles in UltraMon are really slick.  An UltraMon profile stores information about the position, resolution and colour depth of each monitor.  You can easily switch between profiles. If multiple people use the computer, you can configure UltraMon so that each person has a separate, default profile that gets loaded when they log on.  You can also easily switch profiles at any time.

If you are running Windows 2000 or XP, UltraMon provides a feature called mirroring which copies the contents of the main monitor to one or more additional monitors.  It can even allow for different resolutions on the different monitors.  This feature can be very handy when giving presentations, where the presenter's back is to the screen the audience sees.  You can even mirror a monitor into a small window on another monitor; sort of like a TV picture in picture feature. Very cool.

When moving a window to a monitor with a lower resolution, UltraMon can resize it proportionally, such that it is taking up the same percentage of the monitor as it took on the original, or just size it down until it fits.  This eliminates the need to manually resize windows after moving them.

For keyboard jockeys, hotkeys are available for such actions as moving windows from one monitor to another, centering the mouse on the primary monitor or moving it to another monitor, enabling or disabling monitors, changing display profiles, and more.  The hotkeys are completely configurable so you can avoid conflicts with the hotkeys used by your apps.

Realtime Soft did not forget the eye candy.  Wallpaper can be set to stretch across all monitors or you can have different wallpaper on each monitor.  Screen savers normally only run on the main monitor. While most people only find this aesthetically problematic, some consider it to be a privacy issue. UltraMon allows you to either blank secondary monitors or run a separate screen saver on each monitor.

Three monitors are enough for me, but others may want more.  The practical limit is ten, as that is the most the display applet for Windows 2000 and XP can handle.  The author tells me that v2.2 of UltraMon will include a custom display applet to allow configuration of more than 10 monitors.  There is a gallery on the Realtime Soft web site where people can post their configurations with pictures.   Ross Farr holds the top spot right now with ten monitors hooked up to three video cards; two quad head and one dual head. 

Russ uses his system for financial analysis and trading.   He graciously sent me a high-res photo of his desk.  As you can see, he puts multiple monitors to excellent use. 

The Realtime Soft web site has a wealth of information for those wanting to use multiple monitors.  There is an extensive FAQ section and a user forum with over 8,000 posts on it.  There are even links to spectacular panoramic images that are great for wallpaper stretching across multiple monitors.  My current wallpaper is a 360-degree view of Ottawa taken from the Peace Tower.

As with all software, I did not find UltraMon to be perfect.

The taskbars on secondary monitors do not include the Start button or system tray.  It would be nice if these were replicated to each taskbar.  Then you could avoid going back to the main monitor for many operations.  What would be really slick would be if an application launched from any monitor would appear on that monitor unless there was an over-riding setting in the shortcut.

The UltraMon Options dialog box does not have an Apply button.  When testing configuration options, you have to hit the OK button, which closes the dialog box and then you have to open it again to try a different option.  Having an Apply button would allow you to test settings and leave the dialog box open.

At first, I couldn't get the taskbar to show on my third monitor.  I finally figured out I had to right click the 
UltraMon taskbar on the second monitor and choose the command Add Taskbar for ... Monitor 3.

The author of UltraMon says he will consider my suggestions for a future release.

All in all, I highly recommend that people try multiple monitors for a low cost way of increasing your screen real estate.  And if you go with multiple monitors, be sure to try out UltraMon.  You won't be sorry.

Cost is US$40 for a single license.  You can use a single license either for all users on a single computer or a single user on multiple computers, which is refreshingly flexible.  A 30-day eval version is available at the web site at www.realtimesoft.com 

Bottom Line:

UltraMon 2.1
US$40 for a single license
Realtime Soft
www.realtimesoft.com