Hooking up to a non-widescreen monitor

Hey everyone,

No, I don't have a Mac yet, but I'm seriously intrigued by them .

I'm just wondering, I know all the Macs are widescreen, and Mac OS X is basically widescreen too (the desktop would look funny if it was non-widescreen).

I certainly don't think the Apple Cinema Displays are worth it, but I was just wondering, if I bought any Mac, and tried hooking up to a non-widescreen monitor, what would happen? Would the resolution change so that the entire Mac OS X turns non-widescreen, or what?

Thanks in advance!

 

It would work just like any other laptops connection to an external display.
It's independant of the laptops main display, unless you clone the display and use the external display as the reference resolution. Really, it's EXACTLY the same as any other notebook.
The main problem is, using an external monitor of a different resolution can be annoying when you use both.
Take this setup. You have your laptop and external display. Your external display is a smaller resolution that 1440x900. Where I put the X's at, you cannot mouse over to the other monitor. Windows behaves the same. You can "move" the 2nd display around so the area where the mouse over occurs and doesn't occur is different what what I'm showing in the example.
______________
|-----------------x
|-----------------x_______
|---laptop--------|---------|
|-----------------|----ext--|
|_____________|_______|

*edit*

okay, that doesn't show spaces properly for some reason. odd.
So i changed the spaces to -

 

I use my MBP side by side with an 18" Dell UltraSharp. The MBP is the secondary screen at 1440x900 and the Dell is the primary at 1280x1024. It works great. I put what ever I am working on in the main window and all my secondary apps (mail, itunes, ical, etc) on the laptop screen. I love it!

 

Oh hey cash, have you found a way to move the OS X bar (um... what do they call that in OS X?) to the other monitor?
Without cloning the screen...

 

hollownail you are quite the artist man. That illustration was beautiful.

 

lmao... i was gonna draw a real picture. But.. nah

 

With both displays active, go to System Preferences-->Displays. On the main monitor (the one where the dock and menu bar are) it will have an Arrangement option, click it. There are two squares representing each display, one of them has a white line for the menu bar. All you have to do is drag that white line to the other square. That's it! Easy, but not so intuitive.

 

Ahh... sweet. Thanks.

Now, if only the new Front Row would come out so I could use it without it turning off the 2nd display.

 

Another reason I got a Mac. Can you find anything easier than this?

 

Yeah, it is easy, but I'd much rather have the menu bar appear in whichever display the app actually was. Having the menu in one display and the app in another is weird, I'd like to have more options, like stretching for the width of both displays. Also, one can't stretch the dock I guess... hope they gimme that in Leopard.

 

I agree. What I am looking forward to in Leopard is how spaces will work with this. I want a desktop for each screen.