We love the idea of a dual-monitor system, as who wouldn't. But when it comes to putting the concept into practice, we wimp out, chilled by the need to spend several hundred dollars on a second display. We were, oddly enough, quite willing to spend a grand on a laptop that gets used maybe eight days a year. That laptop has a perfectly good LCD panel, which would be ideal as a second screen in a dual-monitor. Of course, our laptop -- and yours -- lacks the input needed to make that display work as a stand-alone monitor. If only there were some kind of "back door" into the laptop's display system; one that could give new life to the countless laptops that spend most of their time in the closet.
It turns out that such a back door exists, and MaxiVista knows where it is. MaxiVista is a package of two software programs that allows any PC's monitor -- laptop or desktop -- to serve as an extension of the primary PC's display. The back door used to make this happen is any standard Ethernet or Wifi connection. Here's how it works. You install the MaxiVista Server on the primary PC, and the MaxiVista Viewer on the second system. If you're running Windows XP Service Pack 2, a Security Alert will pop up the first time you run the program. Clicking "unblock" will allow MaxiVista to run across the network. With earlier versions of Windows, you'll have to manually configure the network to unblock the necessary ports. The manual makes this process refreshingly clear.
Once the installation is complete, and the programs are running on both computers, the Server will automatically find the Viewer and extend the primary PC's display to fill both screens. You can run programs in full-screen or windowed mode on both displays, and in windowed mode can drag programs between screens at will. A taskbar applet on the primary system is used to switch the secondary display on and off (with the "off" position providing full access to the viewer PC's own screen). That applet also serves as the program's configuration menu, allowing you to override the secondary display's default resolution, disable the secondary display's screen saver, switch it to portrait mode, and clone the primary display to the secondary screen, which can be useful for presentations. A recent upgrade to the program adds a remote control option, which allows the primary system's keyboard and mouse to operate the secondary system. A final note: MaxiVista doesn't limit you to two displays. Once you own the program, a free download adds support for two additional PCs, for a total screen area of up to 12,800 by 1,200 pixels. MaxiVista is, in short, a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. We love it, and so will you.