These days, you may have noticed going to your friends’ or relatives’ houses or home offices, many people have two monitors. You may have thought to yourself, “What a showoff,” or “What does he need two for? He can only look at one at a time!” WRONG! Or rather, these people have understood one of the most basic facts about working with computers.

You can never have too much screen!


But even better than having one very large screen is having two screens. Allow me to explain:

• I have two monitors. Not that I planned it like that. It just happened. You see, if you think about it, this could happen to anyone, and it probably did happen to those people you thought of as showoffs. I had an old computer that died. That’s what happens to machines, eventually they die. In the past my monitors had always been so obsolete by the time the computer died that I had thrown away the computer AND the monitor. But this time I had a nice, flat screen monitor, and I thought to myself, why throw this away? Maybe I could use two side by side. This turned out to be THE BEST DECISION I EVER MADE (when it comes to computers, of course).
• Even though I am mostly the one doing the teaching, and precisely for that reason, actually, I need to learn myself. Sometimes people ask me questions that I can’t answer off the top of my head. So I keep two screens active: one to write on and one to read from. GENIUS!

Here’s what I suggest you think about:

Let’s take the series of posts called “RSS” right here on Tech*Tips 4 dodos. There are five posts with videos that show you what to do, step by step, to subscribe to a blog and get RSS feeds. Along the way you also learn to set Google as your homepage, to switch from Google to iGoogle, to customize your homepage, and other goodies along these lines. If you had two screens, you could have the video or the written post on one screen while you actually PERFORMED the various TASKS on the other one. All at the same time.

If you are afraid that this is hard to do, let me tell you right away that having two screens is just like having one big one, only better and more flexible where usage is concerned. When you move your mouse along the table or run your finger along your touch pad or whatever pointing device you have, the little arrow on the screen simply moves over and jumps right into the second screen, as if it were all one. Easy as pie!
If you are afraid that the setup might be difficult. Here are a few scenarios:

1. If you have a laptop, you can simply plug the second monitor into the only plug in which it will fit on the laptop. Do this with the computer turned off. When you turn the computer back on, a little window will open up telling you that the computer has detected a new monitor and it will ask you to choose how you want to use the second monitor. Some people feel that the second monitor is better than the one in the laptop, and when they are at home they plug in the second monitor and make only that one active, using the laptop only as a keyboard and the external monitor as their only monitor. (Why on earth would you want to limit yourself to one screen when you can have two? Beats me!) So you would choose to use both monitors side by side. You click on that option and presto, the second monitor lights up and you see a duplicate of the desktop (the screen you see when you power up the computer) on the second monitor. And it becomes fair game. You still open the icons or the programs from the main computer but then you can drag them over to the other monitor and do two things at once.
2. If you have a desktop, the situation is pretty much identical, but is in some ways even simpler because you won’t ever unplug the second monitor. So once it’s set up, you’re good to go! Here too there will probably be only one plug the external monitor will fit in, so plug it in there with the computer turned off and when you turn it on the same exact thing described in step 1 will happen again.
3. The third option is having a laptop with a DOCKING STATION. I have a docking station and I think it’s very handy. A docking station is basically a glorified power strip, but made especially for computers. So you can plug all the accessories, like the printer, the external monitor, any additional speakers you might have, and so forth to the docking station and then you just park your computer on the connector (you will of course ask your computer store salesperson to give you the correct docking station for your laptop so that your computer and the docking station have the same connector!). What is great about the docking station is that it gives you the best of all worlds: you don’t have to plug in and unplug your laptop every time you go somewhere. All you do is turn off your laptop, disconnect the laptop from the docking station, and you’re off. When you come home you simply connect it again, turn it on, and it’s just like having a desktop, with all the peripheral devices plugged in already and the cables neatly coiled and stowed away. No muss, no fuss!

Here’s a picture illustrating how easy your life could be if you learned on one screen and put the lessons into practice immediately on the other:

My setup with two monitors

As you can see, I have opened the video that teaches how to create a Google account on the right-hand monitor and I am following along and putting the steps into practice on the left-hand side.

If this still seems complicated to you, SPEAK UP! I want you to get the full benefit of my instruction. Therefore, if I need to make a video showing you how I set up my docking station and my second monitor, and how I use the two monitors together, I will be happy to do so! Just ask in the comments, or click on the GIANT BUTTON on the right-hand side of the website. The ASK EGG BIRD button.

Enjoy!

No related posts.

These are tough times, there is no doubt about that. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about what we can do about it. What I’m interested in exploring is how people like you and me can treat the setbacks of our times as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves.

If you are under 25, this blog is probably not for you (though my own kids, teenagers of the internet generation, could use some of the tips you will find here). If you are in midlife, and have been somewhat complacent and comfortable in your job or career, thinking that “the computer age passed me by,” “I’ll leave all that internet stuff to the younger generations, to my younger colleagues, let them pay their dues” –  If you’re one of those people who have said, “technology is really not my thing, I’ve always been perfectly comfortable with a typewriter, if you can spell you don’t need spellcheck, no one learns English anymore these days,” well, you may be in a little bit of trouble.



The fact is that now many of us are losing our jobs, or are forced to change careers because the industry we were a part of is… about to go the way of the dodo! This has happened to me, and I was forced to reinvent myself, more than once. So I come before you today to reach out and pull all you reluctant luddites into the 21st century, where we all live, and where we all belong.

Those of us who are looking for new jobs or careers have to be able to compete with those young kids who already know everything about computers and the internet (or think they do) and that is what this blog is all about.

Do you want to find out what url means, or how to sign up for RSS feeds? What the hell are RSS feeds, anyway? And what about a uri, how does that differ from a url? Streaming video, upload, download, ftp, there are so many terms, so many acronyms, so many things out there that can scare the pants off us.

This is what this site is meant to fight. FEAR. Not only is knowledge power, knowledge is also our best friend in overcoming fear. Together we will learn terms, concepts, how to turn our computers into useful tools that can help us connect to others, discover useful information, buy things we need quickly and easily, and even find a job. Many computer- or internet-related skills sound a lot scarier and harder than they really are. We will try to dispel myths and conquer dragons. Some things are harder than others, but we will try to use simple, common sense language that anyone can understand, even the dodos.

I love this quote from Picasso: “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

We should all live by this creed. And allow me to let you in on a secret: the best way to learn something is to teach it. I too can benefit from my own lessons. In order to teach things to you, I will have to make sure I know them very well myself. So we will all be learning together.

For instance, I don’t speak Spanish, or rather, I speak what I like to call “laundromat Spanish.” But sometimes I wish someone would hire me to teach beginner’s Spanish. You can bet that before that first lesson I would make damn sure I could deliver the goods! I’m not going to show up to class without having done my homework!

So let’s take a deep breath and move on to our first topic: signing up for RSS feeds.

No related posts.