Well, my (remaining) clients mostly perfer . . .

Post #434,421 by Andrew Grygus 6/10/20 11:33:36 PM 6/10/20 11:33:36 PM Reply	Well, my (remaining) clients mostly perfer . . . . . desktops, but never on the desk, and they prefer two large displays. The financial manager for one of them is working from home, so the company bought her a desktop and two screens. They asked me to install a dual monitor video card, which I did.
Post #434,423 by CRConrad 6/11/20 5:59:45 AM 6/11/20 5:59:45 AM Reply	"install a dual monitor video card"... When was this, in 1987? All laptops I've used for the last decade or so support two (or three!) monitors out of the box, no additional equipment needed. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who (used to think he) Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #434,437 by static 6/11/20 11:49:31 PM 6/11/20 11:49:31 PM Reply	A lot of desktops have embedded video. Fine for a lot of tasks. But only one monitor supported. Wade.
Post #434,441 by Andrew Grygus 6/12/20 1:37:54 AM 6/12/20 1:37:54 AM Reply	Which was the case here. HPs tend to be highly crippled, but this one at least had a PCIe16 slot. It was also low profile, but, fortunately, the video card I'd selected came with optional low profile brackets. Fortunately, I had the foresight to take a HDMI to VGA adapter, because both their monitors had only VGA cables. I knew there would likely be limitations and prepared for them. The family that owns this company is very wealthy, so, of course, they bought their office/finance manager refurbed equipment at the lowest price. That's just the way wealthy people are.
Post #434,443 by CRConrad 6/12/20 5:10:04 AM 6/12/20 5:10:04 AM Reply	Utterly fucking weird. I don't get it. Are you saying HP goes to extra lengths to disable even the basic functionality Intel includes on its cheapo processors? Funny, that would mean an extra cost for a negative "benefit". Or that these people buy not only refurb machines (yeah, cheapskate move), but refurb boxes that are nearly a decade old? Funny, you'd think the antique collector's value would make those more expensive rather than less. Utterly fucking weird. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who (used to think he) Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #434,452 by drook 6/12/20 12:20:04 PM 6/12/20 12:20:04 PM Reply	Hey, I'm using one of those low-profile HP desktops Difference is, I've had it for at least 10 years, and I got it as a work cast-off. I'm writing this on it right now as a matter of fact. -- Drew
Post #434,470 by scoenye 6/12/20 5:51:03 PM 6/12/20 5:51:03 PM Reply	It wouldn't have mattered much Recent HP boxes come with various permutations of DisplayPort and HDMI ports. VGA and DVI are getting rare as hen's teeth. Before I left my previous employer, I had the entire attic full of perfectly functional VGA monitors because we couldn't connect them to the round of Win 10 PCs they finally bought. (I picked the PCs. There just weren't any worth buying that came with 2 VGA ports.)
Post #434,482 by pwhysall 6/13/20 2:31:52 AM 6/13/20 2:31:52 AM Reply	Preach it Back before the lockdown and my WFH status, I was on the scrounge for a nicer monitor at work, and found a beautiful HP panel, 1920x1200 or thereabouts. "Come with me, my pretty", I said. Got it to my desk - VGA only. Laptop has HDMI and USB3/TB ports only. Motherfucker. I mean sure, I could have farted about purchasing adapters and whatnot, but at the end of the day, VGA is a dead, analogue standard which means pressing the auto-adjust button on the monitor every time the power goes out, or it randomly decides to forget its settings, and even then it's not quite right, and you have to adjust the phase or the sharpness or the FUCK THIS GIVE ME A DIGITAL CONNECTION IT'S TWENTY FUCKING TWENTY.
Post #434,488 by drook 6/13/20 9:28:40 AM 6/13/20 9:28:40 AM Reply	Note on USB3/TB and Macs At work we've got dual monitors mounted to each desk. I ordered docks for my group, mostly because I was tired of having to carry my dock around each morning. (Hot desking ... don't get me started.) The windows lappers work fine. Macs will either use one in extended mode, or both if you duplicate the main screen to both. It drives both just fine if you put the second in the HDMI. So no dock love for Mac users. -- Drew
Post #434,442 by CRConrad 6/12/20 5:04:16 AM 6/12/20 5:04:16 AM Reply	What's "embedded" video, if not what laptops have had since... Idunno, the Bronze Age? Lots of at least Intel integrated video chips support up to three monitors. From https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025673/graphics.html : For the following graphics products, most combinations of HDMI, DVI, VGA, DisplayPort (DP), Embedded DP (eDP), and Intel® Wireless Display (Intel® WiDi) support three independent displays: Intel® UHD Graphics 605/610/620/630 Intel® HD Graphics 610/615/620/630 Intel® Iris® Plus Graphics 640/650/655 Intel® HD Graphics 500/505/510/515/520/530 Intel® Iris® Plus Graphics 540/550/580 Intel® HD Graphics 6000/5500 Intel® Iris® Graphics 6100/6200 Intel® HD Graphics 4200/4400/4600/5000 Intel® Iris® Graphics 5100/5200 That last one has apparently been around since 2013, and is integrated onto the processor itself. How much more "embedded" do things get? https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Graphics-5100.91977.0.html : The Intel Iris Graphics 5100 (GT3), also called HD Graphics 5100, is a processor graphics card included in some of the Haswell processors of 2013. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who (used to think he) Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #434,453 by drook 6/12/20 12:22:26 PM 6/12/20 12:22:26 PM Reply	Looking at the back of mine ... It's got VGA out, 6 USB, Cat 5 Ethernet, PS/2 for mouse and keyboard, and sound. So even if the chipset supports it there's no place to plug it in. -- Drew
Post #434,467 by CRConrad 6/12/20 5:19:07 PM 6/12/20 5:19:07 PM Reply	OK, no USB Type C, of course... But no DisplayPort (2007) or HDMI (2003)? Or even DVI (1999)?!?
Post #434,473 by Andrew Grygus 6/12/20 7:05:21 PM 6/12/20 7:08:16 PM Reply	Notebooks here are starting to come with HDMI . . . . . but if they do, they don't have VGA, thus still one video port. Many desktops now have two video ports, but I'm not sure if they support two monitors. I've also seen some with one HDMI only. I know that if you plug in a video card, the on-board video is automatically turned off, thus I just make things simply by installing a dual monitor video card. My time costs more than the video card. Edited by Andrew Grygus June 12, 2020, 07:08:16 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #434,480 by pwhysall 6/13/20 2:27:24 AM 6/13/20 2:27:24 AM Reply	My work laptop has only one HDMI port But it also supports video via USB-C, which is how I connect to two monitors when I'm in the office - one on the HDMI connection and one on the USB connection. My personal desktop here (which I built myself) has on-board graphics with DVI and HDMI out, which provides multi-monitor support. I don't use that, having a fast graphics card (AMD RX5700XT) for 3D work and games; this has 2 DP ports and an HDMI port, all of which can be used together. I think the two DP ports can also be used together with a single monitor, to drive very high resolution displays such as 8K.
Post #434,516 by Another Scott 6/15/20 12:25:10 AM 6/15/20 12:25:10 AM Reply	I got J a new Mac Mini and a 4K LG display recently. Beautiful screen and no real problems with the MacMini. But the display wouldn't show 4K on HDMI on the MacMini. I had to use a DisplayPort cable for it. Maybe that's a well-known issue, but it annoyed me for a while until I figured it out. There are still too many connectors. It's getting to be like plumbing connectors... I suppose once everything kinda standardizes on USB-C, then Apple will start using optical fibers to connect everything... Oh, and don't get me started on USB-C docks. I'm using one with my L390 laptop to drive 2 older Dell monitors and that works fine, but if I plug in a USB memory stick into the same dock then the monitors go blank. :-/ Grr... Cheers, Scott.
Post #434,518 by static 6/15/20 4:17:39 AM 6/15/20 4:17:39 AM Reply	USB-C "docks" and adapters... sigh Local electronics store has a range of USB-C things to other stuff, mostly for the MacBook crowd because that's all those things have. Far too many of them have HDMI plus other more desirable stuff - I'm thinking HDMI must be stupid cheap to add, given there's a way to get it directly over the USB-C connector. 2x USB-A plus HDMI. USB-A, SD card reader, HDMI. USB-A, USB-C, HDMI (Apple's standard one, actually). 2x 4K HDMI. Umm. It took me months to find a simple 1x USB-A socket. I settled for a "hub" that has three USB-A sockets plus inexplicably an Ethernet port, too! Standards are wonderful - so many to choose from. Wade.
Post #434,519 by drook 6/15/20 9:01:28 AM 6/15/20 9:01:28 AM Reply	Insert standard XKCD reference here -- Drew
Post #434,479 by drook 6/13/20 12:29:03 AM 6/13/20 12:29:03 AM Reply	Nope, nope, and nope -- Drew
Post #434,503 by static 6/14/20 6:14:39 AM 6/14/20 6:14:39 AM Reply	Not just the processor. The embedded graphics provides a way to do all the fancy schmancy drawing to an image buffer or three but it still needs a physical interface chip to provide a usable offboard connection. Laptops will typically have at least two: one driving an LVDS connection to the screen and a second (or third) driving sockets such as HDMI. But motherboards often have just one driving a HDMI or DisplayPort socket. Thus the limitation. Wade.

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