On Hooking Your PC Laptop to the Projectors

John and Matt alerted me to the fact that their PC laptops weren't as
plug-and-play easy to use with the projectors as I had hoped they
would be. This is a message for anyone dealing with projector
troubles on a PC. (If that's not you, you can probably stop reading
now.)

I'm one of the three of us who still hasn't received a laptop, so I
still don't know as much about this as I had hoped to know by now,
but I'll tell you what Matt and I worked out on Friday.

1. If your computer and the screen don't sync up immediately when
you plug in, go to the "Start" menu, and then select the "Control
Panel."
2. In the Control Panel, choose "Display." If your version of
Windows is set up the XP way, you may not have "Display" is an option
in the first screen that pops up. Instead, you'll get a screen that
says "Pick a Category." If you get that screen, choose "Printers and
Other Hardware," and after that click *I hope* you'll see "Display"
as an option in the sidebar at the left.
3. In the "Display" panel, choose the "Settings" tab.
4. Now . . . if we're lucky (you and me), you'll see two little blue
squares representing monitors that are side by side. If one is
faded, you may need to double click on it to get the computer to
recognize it, or you may need to click the "Identify" option to get
that to happen. I'm (unfortunately) a little hazy on this step.
5. Hit "Apply." Nothing will work if you don't remember to hit
"Apply."

If, at that point, you get your desktop background and nothing else
projected onto the screen, you've got your computer and the projector
in "side by side" mode, which is pretty nice for teaching, actually.
It means you can slide things off of your screen and onto the monitor
(and, conversely, that you can keep things on your monitor that you'd
rather not have projected). Just keep track of where the cursor/
arrow is: if you slide it onto the projector screen, you'll have to
slide it back to do anything on your laptop screen.

I know this is really hard to conceptualize without visuals, and I'm
sorry for that. Let me know if you're having this problem and need
some more hands on help. I'll meet you; we'll figure it out.

Also: if you want to experiment with the monitor settings, you can
most likely do so with any old computer monitor. E.g., you can hook
up your desktop machine's monitor to your laptop the same way that
you hook the projector up (the video plug should be the same). With
it hooked up, you should be able to go into the Display area and
experiment with settings.

Keep me posted on any tech issues with the classrooms . . .

(Or, heck, any ergonomic issues, heating and cooling issues,
whatever you got . . .)

Fred