RE: One or two LCD Monitors

[Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Responding to Paul Hanson's concerns about PCs not being able to support
two monitors, Richard Combs wrote:
 
> You can fix that with a $40 video card, a screwdriver, and ten minutes
> of your time. 
 
True enough. But one possible hitch here is that many relatively recent 
PCs (certainly many that are recent enough not to have been replaced 
on the typical 5-year corporate refresh cycles) have AGP slots for video
cards. All new video cards these days are designed for PCI Express slots, 
and it's getting to the point where you have to go to specialty vendors 
to find a decent selection of AGP cards. And even then, you're likely to 
pay more money (or spend more of your employer's money) for a given 
level of performance because AGP is less popular.
 
Another consideration is whether the monitors you buy have DVI input
connections or only analog. DVI is way superior to analog, so if your 
monitors support it you would want to get a video card that provides
two DVI connections rather than one DVI and one analog or two analog.
 
Also note that you do *not* need the kind of power-user specs that
a computer gamer needs and is willing to spend big money for. You don't
need tons of video RAM or lots of pixel pipelines or a super-fast GPU
because you're not calling on it to render full screens-worth of realistic
3D imagery and texture 30 times per second. You're dealing with text,
and line art, and the occasional photograph--nice, predictable, nearly
static (certainly in gaming terms) content.
 
-Fred Ridder
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