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Why don't you use your brightness-button?
Authored by: mweissen on Mar 26, '03 02:47:37PM

The PowerBook can use an external VGA monitor to extend the OS X desktop. So you get 1152x768 on the LCD and an extra 1280x1024 (or whatever) on the CRT. The menu bar and the dock goes on one of the screen (it's configurable), the other screen is "attached" to the first along one edge (also configurable). This feature is not available on the iBook.

Both 'Books can do video mirroring, showing the same image on both the LCD and the external monitor. This sets both the LCD and the external monitor to the same resolution, usually 1024x768. Your tip "why don't you use the brightness button" essentially means video mirroring with one screen turned off. The video chip is still aware of both screens.

The guy who posted the trick wanted to disable the LCD. His trick makes the PowerBook believe (for a while) that the internal LCD is not there, enabling the PowerBook to focus only on the external screen. I don't know, in theory this could enable higher resolutions, color depths and/or refresh rates for the external screen. If you have an extremely good or extremely large screen (a plasma display?) or are paranoid about color matching, it could be worthwhile to use only the external screen in this manner. Myself, I stick to using the LCD and VGA in parallel.



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