Question

I am thinking about connecting two monitors to my PC. How do I go about it?
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Answer

You'll either need two video cards, or a graphics chip that supports multiple video out. If the card comes with several outputs like VGA, HDMI and DVI, chances are it'll work.

What you need to do is to hook up external displays via the connectors and go into the video card's control panel (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, ATI Catalyst or Nvidia Control Panel). Under the display tab, you should be able to detect both displays and set options such as modes, resolution and color depth. There are usually two modes available: Extended Desktop or Clone Desktop.

Extended Desktop stretches your desktop to span both monitors. This allows you to open multiple windows and gives an easy way to expand your screen real estate. Clone Desktop replicates the same desktop on both monitors. This mode is usually used for presentations or demos as it allows the presenter to see what the audience is viewing

Another option is to buy the new USB monitors, which allow daisy-chaining via the common USB interface. However, these monitors tend to be a little more expensive than the standard models and are currently only available up to 22-inch sizes. Moreover, due to the limited bandwidth of the USB 2.0 interface, the video stream has to be compressed to the monitor, which means a computing overhead for your PC. However, this is an easy way to setup multiple monitors and the performance overhead should not be an issue for all but the oldest machines.