External Monitor setting MBP question

Hello!
I'm trying to get my MBP to display to my external monitor at native resolution of 1920x1200 but all it does is just stretch the 1440x900 on to the external monitor. Does anyone know of any setting I can do to fix this? Also is there a way to have the MBP monitor off while using the external monitor? Many thanks : )

Oh one more thing. When I plug my external speaker to the MBP it seems to not work it's a Logitech one. I'm sure I've plug it in the right port (the one with the headphones). Thanks again.

Another thing my Airport just stopped working for some reason. First it worked then it got d/c for like 10 minute and worked, now it just stopped. It doesn't pick up my router, even when I enter the informations manually. The laptop is only like 4 feet away from the router. My other laptop can connect to the router just fine.

Oh and just to answer a question that I had, along with some one else, earlier. The keyboard does support high power device like iPod when connected to the new MBP. I've only tested iPod(5g) cause it's the only thing I have that powers from usb.

 

Okay after messing around awhile I found out how move everything to my external monitor but it's dual-displaying and I don't want that. Is there a way to turn off the Mac's screen? This would really help out! Many thanks.

 

after connecting the external display just close the lid on the MBP.

 

Only way to turn off the macs screen is to close the lid, and run in "clamshell" mode. (though you may damage the laptop via heat)

When I used to use my external montior, I would just set the backlight off and just use it.

In windows though you can turn off th display on the laptop.

 

Ah thanks guys! The screen does get pretty hot after awhile : / but I discover that if I open the lid up again the screen won't turn back on!

 

Here's what I do, in order:

- MBP is in sleep mode
- Turn on external monitor (24" in my case)
- Connect power to MacBook Pro
- Connect display to MacBook Pro
- Connect USB external keyboard/mouse to MacBook Pro

... and voila, the MBP magically awakens from sleep and shows its image on the external monitor. In full 1920x1200 screen resolution. To disassemble, I just remove all the above connections and it goes back to sleep. Opening the lid after that works normally.

The MBP will only do the above if you connect an external keyboard. It's smart enough to know that without a keyboard, and the lid closed, you are not going to be able to use the machine.

For cooling, I put it on a USB cooling pad which works very well. The cooling pad cost about $5 and has 3 fans on the bottom that blow air on the underside of the MBP. That works really well b/c the MBP uses the entire underside as heat sink.

I constantly monitor the temperature and fan speed - it tends to be an issue in these parts - and my setup works pretty well. I noticed that the cooling logic is tuned to this setup as well - I will generally get higher fan speeds at the same temperature in closed lid mode. That means OS X knows that the MBP is in closed lid mode, and that it needs to turn up the fans a little higher.

Of course I could use the MBP display as secondary display but I find it to be more trouble than it's worth.

There's an Apple Knowledge Base document covering this, but it's well hidden and I cant find it right now.