Friday, November 4, 2011

Triple Monitors on a Dell Latitude e6520

I have just recently started using a triple monitor setup and I've got to say, it's pretty bomb. I've used 2 monitors before and never thought I would make use of a 3rd one, but low and behold I am addicted. Now i have a Dell latitude on a port replicator, a.k.a. docking station. Because of the way the computer is designed it can only support 2 monitors. On the physical computer it has a VGA output and a HDMI output. The port replicator has two DVI outputs and one VGA. Looking at it i assumed you could use three monitors easily. I was clearly wrong. The drivers installed only support 2 monitors. The solution is pretty simply but not the most reliable. Using a Star Tech USB to DVI adapter that creates another driver for the computer to install a 3rd monitor. So now I run 3 monitors, one on HDMI, one on VGA, and another using the USB to DVI adapter. The only problem is with the reliability of the adapter. It is relatively cheap (around $45) and does allow the third monitor but has displayed some problems coming out of sleep. Once Windows goes into sleep mode or the screen saver comes on the adapter has been known to not come back on. Solution usually is a restart of the computer or sometimes unplugging and plugging the adapter back in. While this creates the occasional inconvenience, the 3 monitor setup is awesome! A different solution may also be to get a better, more expensive adapter, however this solution works for me and I do enjoy having email on one screen, research on another, and documents I am working on the other. Highly effective and great for getting work done.

Update

This is due to a limitation of the video card that is in the 6510, 6520, 6530 models because they don’t have a discrete video card.  The new models 6540 have 2 video cards, the “run of the mill” Intel graphics card only supports 2 monitors but the discrete video card (Nvidia) that was added to these supports 3 or more monitors by itself.

If you order this make sure you get the discrete Nvidia cards.