Multiple Monitors On Surface Pro?
 

I've got to take a second person laptop shopping on Wednesday.

For this one, cost is not a consideration, small size is, and I can
imagine them going for a Surface pro or one of the Asus Surface devices.

The Questions:

- Can the Surface pro support more than one external monitor.
I don't really expect so... but...

- With the Surface Pro attached to an external 1920x1200 monitor,
can the user see desktop on one screen and other stuff on
the second screen? i.e. Does it work like XP/7? I'm pretty
sure it will, but the penalty for my telling somebody wrong
would be severe.... -)
--
Pete Cresswell

Multiple Monitors On Surface Pro?
 

On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:28:00 -0500, (PeteCresswell) wrote:

I've got to take a second person laptop shopping on Wednesday.

For this one, cost is not a consideration, small size is, and I can
imagine them going for a Surface pro or one of the Asus Surface devices.

The Questions:

- Can the Surface pro support more than one external monitor.
I don't really expect so... but...

- With the Surface Pro attached to an external 1920x1200 monitor,
can the user see desktop on one screen and other stuff on
the second screen? i.e. Does it work like XP/7? I'm pretty
sure it will, but the penalty for my telling somebody wrong
would be severe.... -)

To help you with your decision on which device you should choose, rather
than answer your question I would like to direct you to this link:
http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-...g-update-works
.. Apparently, Microsoft has one hell of an issue with the Surface Pro line
and has yet to fix it. Meanwhile, ASUS motherboards are considered the
best on the market and even their cheapest monitors perform beautifully
for gaming systems.
--
Silver Slimer
GNU/Linux is Communism
The average GNU/Linux user:
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...x/38314453.jpg

"That is incorrect. GNU/Linux is worse then communism because at least in
a communist country you would be paid a wage for your work. In GNU/Linux
your work helps some fat cat on wall street earn bigger dividends in his
stock portfolio because nobody had to pay for your work.

Of course, Linus is a big winner since he earns millions of dollars on the
sucker programmers free labor." - Michael Bachmann

Multiple Monitors On Surface Pro?
 

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
I've got to take a second person laptop shopping on Wednesday.

For this one, cost is not a consideration, small size is, and I can
imagine them going for a Surface pro or one of the Asus Surface devices.

The Questions:

- Can the Surface pro support more than one external monitor.
I don't really expect so... but...

- With the Surface Pro attached to an external 1920x1200 monitor,
can the user see desktop on one screen and other stuff on
the second screen? i.e. Does it work like XP/7? I'm pretty
sure it will, but the penalty for my telling somebody wrong
would be severe.... -)

It has a mini-DisplayPort connector. A passive adapter would
likely be limited to single link DVI resolutions. 1920x1200 would
work, but would be using reduced blanking (to stay below 165MHz).

http://www.nencetti.org/2013/03/12/313/

Examples of single link resolutions can be seen in this article.
1920x1200 is pretty well the highest a single-link interface can support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi

Example display modes (single link):
WUXGA (1,920 × 1,200) @ 60 Hz with CVT-RB blanking (154 MHz)

The external display device could have native DisplayPort, in which
case no adapter would be needed, and higher resolutions supported.

If you use an active adapter, it costs more, it draws power
from the power pin on the DisplayPort connector, and it supports
higher resolution.

But for a passive adapter cable to work, the DisplayPort must support
dual mode operation. So we'd need to see the Surface documentation
to verify that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displayport#Dual-mode

The Surface Pro 2 lists "Mini DisplayPort 1.2". I can't get
that information off the Microsoft site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Pro_2

The DisplayPort article on Wikipedia also mentions daisy
chaining DisplayPort monitors, but the hub to do that
became available Sept 2013 so may not be all that available/tested
yet.

Also, if you notice some mention of "docks" for Surface Pro,
be aware that at least one of them, is a USB display adapter
based on a DisplayLink chip. That's not the same thing as
taking a video signal from the mini-DisplayPort which is
driven by the Intel hardware directly. At least one picture
I could find, looked like a person "cheating" with a USB dock.
The fun starts on those, when you try to play a video on
one (USB bandwidth).

*******

Since I'm having trouble finding a picture of a dual monitor
style Surface Pro 2 setup, perhaps you could drop into
the Microsoft brick and mortar store, and ask for a demo.

Paul