A couple of newbie dual monitor questions

[Glaive]

Ok, first off, yes I did use the Search function. Answered several questions I had, but there are still a couple of things that are unclear.

Here's what I'm wanting to do: I'm a gamer, mainly MMORPG's, and I was wanting to set things up so that I could play my game on one monitor, and then have other programs, like IE, running on the second monitor, so that I could look up quest info or whatever and still be able to keep an eye on the game world.

Now, I understand that I can't have my mouse active in both windows, but will I simply be hitting some command, like Alt+tab, which transfers the cursor to the other monitor while leaving my game running and visible to me? I don't need to be able to interact with programs in both monitors at once, I just want to make sure that they can both be visible while I'm working on one.

Secondly, I don't know how resolutions and so forth work with dual monitors, but I currently have a 17" LCD, and was interested in getting a CRT to use as my main monitor for gaming purposes so I can utilize higher resolutions. It is my understanding that with dual monitors you are generally extending your desktop across both of them, so does that mean that they both have to be the same resolution? Would I be able to run a game on the CRT at 1600X1200 and browse the internet on the other monitor at 1024X768?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[ATF 2GTalon]

Almost all games running in full screen will lock the mouse to the 1 monitor. Whatever you have opened in the 2nd screen will still be visible, and as you already know, during the game you will not be able to access the 2nd screen. Some games do allow you to "alt-tab" which essentially will minimize the game and drop you back to desktop. Then you can go do your thing on the 2nd monitor. Some games have a windowed mode, and in this case you can move the mouse to any monitor you want while the game is still active.

For resolutions both monitors can be set to different resolutions and it'll be ok. The only thing is if you span a window across both monitors like word, or a web browser, it will look pretty weird and disproportioned.

[Glaive]

OK, so different resolutions is cool, but you're saying that unless I'm playing a game in a window that I won't be able to go do anything on the other monitor while playing without minimizing the game, thus removing it from view, correct?

If so, that removes a large reason for me to consider dual monitors, since if I have to minimize the game it's functionally not any different than simply doing the same thing on one monitor.

[Timelessblur]

also make sure the 2nd montior is set up to be to the left of the pimary monitor in the display setting. Monitor 2 gets kind of screwy if the primay monitor changes reslotions for a game and the 2nd monintor is to the right of the main.

Also all the games that run in full screen will normal lock you curusoing in the game windows. The ones that dont will quickly tick you off. On those if you click out side the the game window it just minizes the game. Oh and yes you can keep reading the stuff in the 2nd montior when you are playing on your main.

I have been running dual monitors for a while. for the most part it mostly a gimic but it does come in hand form time to time. Most of the time I just have iTunes full screened in monitor 2 and everything else runs in my main. The 2nd monitor just a good play to store windows so you can still see the data in them.

All in all I dont think I would want ot go back to a single monitor set up.