I recently upgraded my main external monitor to a new 27″ Dell display. All set to enjoy the high resolution glory of 2560×1140, I was perplexed. Why couldn’t I push the screen this high, using my MacBook Pro? The answer eventually turned out to be that the Mini DiplayPort to DVI adapter that Apple sells is limited to 1920×1200 resolution. The solution? A cheap Mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort adapter.

Going The Non-Apple Display Route

Apple sells its own 2560-by-1440 resolution monitor, the Apple LED Cinema Display. It works with a MacBook Pro no problem — I know, I tested my 2010 MacBook Pro with one when I was trying to figure out my issue with  a non-Apple monitor.

Unlike most displays I’ve seen, the Apple one is pre-wired. It has a Mini DisplayPort cable running from inside the monitor case and out to the part you plug into your computer. If your computer doesn’t have a Mini DisplayPort socket, you’re out of luck.

I debated going with the Apple monitor, but it doesn’t come with an anti-glare coating. The Dell that I eventually bought (links to everything below) does. Like many monitors, the Dell can handle several types of inputs: VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.

Apple’s DVI Adapter Not “Dual Link”

When the Dell arrived, I connected to it using a DVI cable. I already had the Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter that Apple sells, which I’d been using quite successfully to drive my old 24″ Dell with 1920×1200 resolution. The second picture to the right shows what it looks like.

With the new Dell, this configuration wouldn’t drive the monitor any higher than 1920×1200, despite the Dell being able to handle this. That higher resolution wasn’t recognized.

I tried various things. I checked to make sure I had the latest display card drivers. I did. I thought maybe I needed to manually choose a higher resolution in the way the display card allows, through Windows 7 (yes, I use the MacBook to run Windows 7 via Boot Camp). That didn’t help.

I tried other connections. I had a Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter and a spare HDMI cable. That didn’t help. I realized that maybe the problem was that my existing DVI cable was of the old “Single Link” variety and couldn’t carry the extra signal bandwidth for my WSXD display. Looking at the cables that came with the Dell, which I’d previously ignored, I realized a “Dual Link” DVI cable was included. But using that also didn’t help.

Eventually, I wondered if maybe a pure Display Port connection would do the job. Also, looking closely at Apple’s page about its Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter, I saw a review noting that the adapter couldn’t do more than 1920 by 1200 resolution. That’s something you’d think Apple’s own specs about the adapter would note, but they don’t.

Hunting For Mini DiplayPort-To-DisplayPort Adapater

What I needed was a Mini DiplayPort-to DisplayPort adapter. Until now, I hadn’t really known much about DisplayPort at all. I thought it was only a quirky Apple thing. In fact, I assumed “Mini DisplayPort” meant DisplayPort. Nope, I learned — it’s yet the latest way to output video (and audio) from your computer, a sort of HDMI designed for computers. DisplayPort is a cable with plugs that look very similar to HDMI cables. Mini DisplayPort is a smaller version of this.

I called my local Apple store. No luck — they didn’t carry mini-to-regular DisplayPort adapters. I headed over to my local Fry’s Electronics. I was amazed they didn’t have them in stock, either.

Eventually, turned to Amazon. I found several options. I originally ordered a Mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable, but the delivery date got pushed back. So I turned to ordering a MiniDisplayPort-to-DisplayPort adapter. It came within two days and has been working perfectly to power my Dell to its full resolution ever since. Cost? $15.

The third picture to the right shows what it looks like; the picture at the top of this post shows it plugged into my MacBook. You can also see USB cables with that, but those aren’t related to the display cable. It doesn’t require them. Those lead to my various USB devices.

The new setup also sent sound, along with video, to my Dell monitor. That was a problem, as my Dell monitor doesn’t have  soundbar installed. This was easily solved. In Windows, right click on the speaker icon in your taskbar, select Playback Devices, then locate the speakers you want to use and set that your default.

Learn More

For more information, see the links below. The ones to Amazon earn me a little bit, if you ultimately buy through them:

• DisplayPort: official industry web site
• Apple 27″ LED Display: official web page
• Apple LED Cinema Display 27-Inch: Amazon sales page
• Dell UltraSharp U2711 27″ monitor: official web page
• Dell UltraSharp U2711 27-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor: Amazon sales page
• Altaz Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort Adapter: Amazon sales page (this is the adapter I bought)

Remember, if you buy any Mini DiplayPort-to-Displayport adapter or cable, be sure it will power 2560-by-1440 resolution, if that’s what your monitor can handle. Not all do.

Also see these past posts about monitors from me. In addition to my new main external monitor, my MacBook Pro is happily driving two additional external monitors, as well as its own screen. The last post explains this more.

• My Multimonitor Setup: Three Screens For One Computer
• Multiple Monitor Solutions For The MacBook Pro
• My MacBook Pro Goes Multimonitor: 4 Monitors At Once!

After nearly two years of leaving my desktop and a 3 monitor setup behind, I’m back to 3 monitors + 1, four screens in total, all running from my MacBook Pro.

My My Multimonitor Setup: Three Screens For One Computer post explains how I used to run three monitors from my Windows XP desktop. When I made the leap to a MacBook, I had only one external display port — so I could only run one external monitor.

That’s been OK for the most part. My external monitor was a big Dell 24″ widescreen running at 1920×1200 resolution. I’d usually use it for running my Windows XP installation on my MacBook “up above” with my Mac programs (usually just Firefox) running “down below.” My Mac & Windows Under VMware – Awesome! post has more about this.

Still, it has felt cramped at times. I’ve missed my three monitor setup and have even pondered leaving the Mac entirely to get back to it (see Time To Leave The Mac?). I knew there were some solutions for the MacBook, because I’d explored some options early on, as outlined in my Multiple Monitor Solutions For The MacBook Pro post. But I just never got any of them going.

Greg Boser inspired me by getting his MacBook running dual external monitors. Using a Matrox box, he got two screens running off his MacBook Pro. I talked with him a bit about it by phone, and later that day at Fry’s Electronics, there I saw the Matrox — the “triple head” version designed to run three monitors. I’d never seen these in stock before. I grabbed one to try it out.

Well, it works, sort of. You plug one end into your MacBook’s external display port. That runs into the Matrox box. Then the Matrox box has three outputs, one for each of up to three monitors.

All my monitors were recognized, but the Matrox thought they were all one big screen. That was a pain for various reasons.

For one, if you’re like me and running Windows through VMware, there’s a handy “full screen” mode. But using that mode on any one of my three external monitors caused the Windows screen to run across all of them. After all, as far as Matrox was concerned, the three monitors were all the same.

OK, just run my Mac programs on the external monitors? Sure, except you know how with the Mac, the menu bar for a program runs at the top of the screen, rather than at the top of a particular program’s own window as with Windows? This meant my menu bar ran across all three screens. So if I needed it, I had a long stretch waaaaaaay over to the left-most screen.

Really, the killer reason I returned the Matrox box was because my screen resolution dropped. I have three external screens. One is that widescreen 24″ directly in front of me. Off to either side are two square 20″ displays that can run 1600×1200 resolution.

The Matrox box couldn’t understand that one was a widescreen. As far as it was concerned, I had to have three monitors that were all the same size, and it was going to pretend they were, even if they weren’t. Worse, when running three monitors, you can’t get resolution better than 1280×1024 per monitor, in most cases (a few graphics cards will support 1680×1050 — the full rundown is here).

The drop in resolution meant I was losing a lot of screen real estate, which was the reason for wanting to increase the number of external monitors in the first place.

I went back to Fry’s far more educated about the need to know the maximum resolution that an external monitor adapter could drive. Looking around on the shelves, I found a Diamond BVU195 USB-DVI adapter. The box said it worked with Macs and could drive the resolutions I wanted. So I purchased two of them – $70 each, $140 total versus $340 for the Matrox box.

Want buy the Diamond or Matrox online? Here are links to Amazon with my affiliate code, so yep, I earn something off of these:

• Diamond BVU195: Currently $74
• Diamond BVU160: Currently $38 (this seems to be an older version and, as best I can tell, works exactly the same except the max resolution supported is 1600×1200)
• Matrox TripleHead: Currently $287
• Matrox DualHead: Currenlty $201

(I must also include this Fry’s digression, for Fry’s fans. Feel free to skip this paragraph. Fry’s also currently has a $10 rebate going on, making them $60, if you believe rebates ever work. Plus, the price is actually $65 each at Fry’s right now, so that’s $55 with rebate. But due to the unique nature of Fry’s, that $65 price didn’t ring up on the register. It came up as $70. Asking why caused the clerk to take me on a hike across the store to see the price marked on the shelf. It was $65, as I had said. Then a second person was enlisted to override the system. All along, he kept telling me I could have the $65 price only on one, as these were currently only one to a customer. That’s not true — it’s the rebate that’s limited to one per household. But then, a third customer service person was enlisted to try and fix the mess the second person was making in trying to override the system. End result: me saying you know, I’ll spend the extra $5 to $10 I was going to save just to get the heck out of the store.)

When I got home, I plugged them both into my external USB hub. Then I plugged the cable from each of my square end monitors into each box:

As for my middle monitor, I plugged that directly into my Mac’s built-in external display port. And?

And nothing. The Mac didn’t see them. And the CD-ROM enclosed didn’t have any drivers. And the sparse printed instructions didn’t mention the Mac at all.

Dammit. But there it was on the box. They were supposed to support Macs. So I went back to online product page (that I linked to above), found the support area and downloaded the drivers that clearly said Mac OS. And got nothing. No drivers. However, there was another sparse manual in what I downloaded that mentioned Mac support — saying to get the drivers from the DisplayLink site.

Well, I didn’t even know what DisplayLink was. I guess it’s a standard for multiple monitor support. So I headed over and found the Mac page. In turn, that sent me to a forum page where, if you scroll down to the very bottom, you get the latest driver. Not very reassuring.

And yet, it worked. It worked marvelously. Once the drivers were installed, and I rebooted, my Mac saw my two additional monitors. I had three external monitors running in total, plus my laptop display (1440×900 resolution on a 15″ screen) as well.

It’s awesome. It really is. Each of my four screens is seen independently by the Mac — and can be independently controlled. My laptop screen:

My widescreen external:

And what I see for each of my monitors on the sides:

I can arrange them however I’d like. My current setup is shown at the top of of this post (and shut up. I know my desk is a mess. Let’s not even get into how in doing all this, my laser printer fell on the floor and now probably has to be replaced. Don’t. Go. There).

Here’s the Arrangement screen from the Display control in System Preferences:

Want your menu bar for a program on a particular monitor? Just click on the thin line I’ve pointed to below and drag it to the monitor you want:

I wish you could put the dock on an external monitor, but I haven’t found a way to do that.

So far, the monitors run great. The two through the USB adapters feel ever so slightly sluggish — really not that noticable, and I’m pretty happy. I did find that Skitch, my screenshot application for the Mac, crashes if I try to shoot using the USB monitors. But so far, that’s the only glitch.

I briefly tried testing whether I could link either of the USB adapters to VMware, so that I could extend my Windows desktop to them. That kind of freaked out my monitors. I might play with this more later. But if use use Unity mode in VMware, then you can put a Windows application on any of your monitors, not just within the one running Windows. Of course, I find Unity mode to be sluggish — but I might play with that more, also.

Meanwhile, I still debate the PC versus Mac choice. If Mac made a laptop with an Intel i5 or i7 quad processor, problem completely solved. I’d feel I had enough horsepower to run both operating systems super well. But VMware on my existing MacBook still does the job pretty well, and this solves the other major issue that was making me think I needed to jump to a desktop — more monitors.

Another wish would be if Mac simply made an iMac in a 24″ size that had i5 or i7 processors. That’s only possible for the 27″ iMac — and that’s simply too big. For me, it wouldn’t allow room for monitors on either side, and I don’t want one monitor on just one side, as I find ergonomically, it helps to move my head all around.

Really, my MacBook setup is great. I get my email right in front of me on my laptop screen, “down below.” I’ve got room to read and write within a browser directly in front. And I’ve got monitors giving me room for additional reading or other tasks to either side. I just want more power!

For more on what I’ve written about multiple monitors, especially tips on using them in Windows, see my Multiple Monitors archives.

With my desktop out of action, I’m currently on my new MacBook Pro as I’ve written, making use of its internal screen to run things on the Mac side and one of my external screens to run Windows apps. It annoys me that my two other monitors as you can see in the picture above are going to waste (the picture shows my normal setup, not the current one). But the MacBook, like all laptops I’ve seen, as only one external output. What can you do?

NOTE: See also my follow-up post since this was written, My MacBook Pro Goes Multimonitor: 4 Monitors At Once!

Well, I started exploring options. Here’s the big caveat. I’ve not tried any of these and probably won’t. That’s because I’m about to head off on a trip, and by the time I get back, my desktop will be repaired. But who knows, maybe I will some day. It’s a pain to be shifting from a desktop to a laptop, despite what I think are my awesome and cool powers of organizing information I need to take with me on the go. More on that later — perhaps they aren’t so awesome and cool! But two screens just don’t cut it for me, so to stay on a laptop — any laptop — I’d need a multimonitor solution.

Kensington has a dual monitor adapter that looked promising. You plug it into a USB port, and that gives you a second external monitor. Alas — it doesn’t work for the Mac. Kensington seems to have an issue with Macs, I guess. A USB docking station that could do a similar thing doesn’t work for Macs either, says this Mac forum. And reviews at Amazon say it doesn’t work well, period. Of course, there’s a chance that either solution would work for my virtual Windows setup. Maybe I’ll find a way to test it someday.

VTBook is another solution I stumbled upon after reading up on the MacRumors forum. This is a CardBus solution that gives your laptop a second external monitor or even three external monitors, if you get the right cable. Downside? At about $250, it’s expensive. Worse, the MacBook Pro can only take the small ExpressCard format. That means you’d have to buy yet another adapter like this.

The Magma ExpressBox looks interesting but clunky. Got an old PCI video card lying around? You shove it into this box, then connect the box via the ExpressCard slot and boom, you have a second external monitor. I’m guessing if you can find a PCI card with dual outputs, you could then have a third external monitor as well. But at about $750, this ain’t the solution for me!

SideCar from Digital Tigers looks awesome, promising to let you run up to four external displays. Wow! Oh, but it’s a CardBus connection, so you’d need an ExpressCard adapter. And like $1,300. No thanks.

I like the Matrox products best. These are the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go. Dual will power two external monitors; triple will do three. You can get them in VGA or DVI versions. Here’s the magic thing. You just run a cable from your DVI output into the box. That’s it (or so they say). And, it will work for the Mac OS. Here’s someone proudly doing this on a MacBook pro. As for pricing, it’s about $150 to $200 depending on the version you go to. If I see one of these when I’m in New York next week for the Ad Age Digital Conference, I might have to go for it.

I’ll end on MaxiVista. After finally trying this software, I’m seriously sad I’ve dumped a Windows laptop. See, if I’m gone on a long trip, I’ll pack a 15″ external monitor with me, because I find that extra screen makes me so productive. I’m still waiting for the laptop maker that gets smart and gives me a laptop where I can somehow fold out a second screen!

Even though I got the smallest monitor I could find, it’s still heavy. But MaxiVista lets you use a second laptop as an external monitor. That’s pretty cool, because I have two old ultralights in the house, my Toshiba Portege 3010 and Portege 3480. Seriously light — like the hype over the MacBook Air made me think ummm, I had a small notebook like that three years ago.

Packing those puppies would be much easier than lugging that third monitor. So I fired up MaxiVista in Windows running under VMWare Fusion. That was the server. The client was MaxiVista running on my old Toshiba laptop. And wow! It worked. I totally was able to extend my monitor.

Alas, there was one small problem. When I tried to click on something in the main screen, the main window on VMWare, the mouse was totally off. Say I wanted to click on a button that was in the exact middle of the screen. I’d have to slide the pointer almost to the right of the screen to actually connect.

I contacted MaxiVista, but they provide no Mac support. It would have been a great and cheap ($30) solution. Guess Windows users still have some luck after all!

Postscript: See also My MacBook Pro Goes Multimonitor: 4 Monitors At Once!

See, Chris Pirillo is

all excited because he has two widescreen monitors. I mock your setup,
Chris! As readers know, I’m a long time multiple monitor user. A few months ago, I
went for a widescreen in the middle:

It rocks. It rocks mainly because when using outlook, I can have folder view
on the left, item view in the middle and reading pane on the right. It’s all
nice and makes use of the screen properly.

The only thing that sucks is that the resolutions of the twin 20" monitors
don’t match the widescreen one. So if I drag from one place to the other, it’s a slight adjustment
when things get bigger. I suspect the cure will be three widescreen monitors in all.

FYI, for the curious, here’s a look at my office in general:

And over here:

In the picture above, we can easily see the answer to Michael
Gray’s question
of whether I am a Space: 1999 fan. Look at that dresser, Michael. See the cool
looking futuristic TV in the middle? (It IS cool — and it does work, at least in
the US). See it on top? See it. Yes, that’s an Eagle. Next to Thunderbird 2. By
the Robison’s robot. Near the Borg Cube. Across from the working transporter.

I’m a big multiple monitor fan, and I’ve covered my own setup in the
My Multimonitor Setup: Three
Screens For One Computer post here on Daggle. Today, I came across an
awesome gallery of other multiple monitors in action.

Ultramon hosts the
gallery here. I just added my own setup, as you’ll find

here. You can then easily work your way back through many of the other
entries. Check out:

Nice — a widescreen in the middle as I was originally thinking of doing and
still might do!

Four screens — one projected above the other three!!!!

Five screens!!!!!

Six screens!!!!!!

Seven screens!!!!!!!

The ones above I got by working backwards from the newest entry to the
oldest. You can also

sort by number of monitors, in descending order. Most monitors? Twelve.
Here’s one example of that:

Here’s a nine monitor arrangement with a big projection over the others (with
Sky as well).

It makes me think how easy it would be to mount a projector on the wall
behind me and beam something above my existing three screens. Why? Just the
coolness factor! Or like with the example above, a handy way to monitor TV
without taking up a working monitor. Perhaps I might try it as a way to use my
photos as virtual wallpaper.

Now here’s a different multimonitor setup — one hooked up to an exercise
treadmill.
The
Threadputer, as it’s called, looks pretty cool. Venture capitalist Brad Feld
says he can work well on it even when running. It did get me thinking about
doing the same, but I do a lot of typing. Feld does have a keyboard on his
setup, but I get the impression he’s not doing a ton of writing while working
out. Instead, he seems to mainly use it for conference calls. Plus, when I’m
exercising, I use a rower. I just don’t think I’d get much work done on that.
Plus, rowing is when I get a lot of my TV viewing done. I’m halfway through the
Firefly DVD box set right now — and sad there’s no season two to follow.

My old house was made of cob, which is like a British adobe. The walls were
made of chalk, mud, horse hair and the odd bit of horse poo. You don’t hang
heavy things off a cob wall without a lot of thought. In my new house, it’s good
old brick, which got me to thinking that I could start mounting my monitors on
the wall in front of my desk. I could, perhaps, even go to five monitors!
Realistically, I think three’s a good number. But check out the Gadgets Blog’s

Wall-O-Monitors Project, which has 12 30" flatscreens on a wall. Nice!

Ashley Friedlein over at E-consultancy
saw the whole "I’ve got three monitors; Bill Gates has three monitors"
thing and raises the odds.
His company gets people onto nine monitors as quickly as possible, he

writes. Plus he even has a picture:

Blog readers know I’m a multimonitor fan. Two screens aren’t enough for me –
three is the magic number, as I’ve written in
My Multimonitor Setup: Three
Screens For One Computer. I’m not alone. Apparently, Bill Gates thinks three
is the way to go as well, as he

writes in Fortune today:

On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I
can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display
area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is
usually the specific e-mail I’m reading and responding to. And my browser is
on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see
what new has come in while I’m working on something, and to bring up a link
that’s related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front
of me.

Bill’s setup:

My setup:

I wonder if he’s got a
Spot
watch like me? Very soon, I’ll blog the joys of that!

Dave Naylor was asking me today on our Daily SearchCast podcast about whether he should stick with one monitor or jump to two. My response? Go for three! I’ve used three monitors for about two years now, and I’d never go back.

It all started when I bought a new computer with a video card that had two outputs, digital and analog. I used the digital for my new 17″ LCD, but I wondered if I could get an old monitor going on the analog card. So I set my old 20″ CRT to one side, plugged it in and was amazed at how I could expand my desktop.

Honestly, if you’ve never used a multi monitor setup in Windows, it really does feel like magic. Using the Settings tab of your Display Properties, you can choose to extend your primary desktop onto the other monitor. And then that’s what happens. You have a super big desktop, where if you pick up something, you can drag if from one monitor and drop it onto the other.

The only problem with using two monitors I found was that my neck started hurting from looking only ahead or to the right. I figured if I got a third monitor going on my left hand side, I’d be moving my head around in various directions, avoiding any pain.

The alternative, I suppose, would have been to have had two monitors right next to each other in front of me. But I disliked this idea, because then my main natural viewing area directly ahead would be gone. I’d always be looking slightly to the left or right.

My bright idea meant purchasing two more 17″ LCD monitors plus another video card, so I’d have three outputs in all. It was worth the money. I couldn’t believe how much more productive I was. In my middle screen, I could write. On one of my other screens, I could read about something new happening. And on my third screen, I could test out what was being described. It was fabulous.

I recently graduated to 20″ LCDs for reasons I’ll explain more below (along with twin Nvidia gaming cards, handy if I ever want to link them together and run them as a single super accelerated card for games. I’ll never do that, but it’s nice to know I can). Here’s how the current setup looks:

I quickly found I needed two more purchases to make things fly to really do well with a multimonitor setup. The first was Ultramon, which I’ve written about before. It allows me to have a taskbar for each of my computer screens.

For example, currently on my main central monitor, I have FrontPage open. I also have my Outlook email window open. Both show on my taskbar on the middle screen. If I select one of the applications, I can switch to it.

Without Ultramon, Windows stupidly would put the applications I have open on my left and right monitors also on my main central window’s taskbar (my Outlook Calendar, Firefox, Paint Shop Pro, a few others would all show up). That’s because my other monitors wouldn’t have their own taskbars. Ultramon corrects this. In addition, it makes it easy to shoot any application from one screen to another. For instance, look at this:

See the two buttons to the left of the normal minimize, maximize and close window buttons? If you click on the one with the little arrow, that Choose Monitor window pops up that you can also see. Then click on the monitor you want to send a window to, and it magically moves over there.

The other key element is a good monitor stand. I’m appalled at the state of LCD stands. The new 20″ Dell monitors I bought late last year can’t be elevated to the height to match my eyes for good viewing. My old 17″ LCD monitors were worse. After some searching those years ago, I ended up going for an Ergotron base, a DS100 Triple-monitor Desk Stand. They aren’t cheap.

NOTE: Aside from the Ergotron monitor stand, which I’ll describe further, here are some other stands sold via Amazon (and FYI, if you purchase via these links, I earn a little on the sale. The Ergotron link above also takes you to Amazon)

• Planar Dual Monitor Stand
• DoubleSight Dual Monitor Stand
• DS100 Dual-monitor Desk Stand

I love the base except for two key problems. First, there’s no storage on it. Moreover, it’s got this weird peaked shape. If you look at my picture above, you’ll see the junk I’ve piled on it. Each pile leans slightly downhill. I wish they’d just made the thing flat, so my stuff wouldn’t slide off.

More important, the monitors can’t be tilted naturally in the way I’d like. Look at this:

– sorry, the picture’s now gone from the Ergotron site –

OK, that’s from the Ergotron site and shows you how they think the monitors should be set-up. Look nice a pretty, all seamless, right? And I can make my monitors look this way. The problem is, while it looks pretty, it’s uncomfortable to view them. The left and right hand monitors can’t be viewed directly straight on. In other words, I can’t turn my head and be looking straight at one of the side monitors. I literally have to turn in my chair and lean slightly to do this, to get a more comfortable viewing angle.

Here’s a closer up example from my own setup, before adjustment:

You should be able to see what a very slight bend the right monitor is on. It’s not tilted/angled in a way that both your eyes can look at it from exactly the same distance. Trying to look at it just isn’t comfortable. Now the monitors can be adjusted. You can set them up so that you can tilt them inward or outward from you, IE, adjusted horizontally. But look at this picture:

Notice how the top of the monitor leans more forward than the bottom? It’s incredibly annoying. Nor is there any reason for it to happen. These are standard VESA mounts. A monitor on them should be perfectly aligned between the top and the bottom. There should be no lean at all. OK, so why not just tilt the top back a bit. You can’t. The mount can either tilt horizontally or vertically, not both. Here’s an example with the vertical tilt setup:

If you go with this, sure, you can make sure the monitor doesn’t lean forward. However, then you’re back to the original problem of the monitor not being comfortable to view because it’s not tilted properly toward you horizontally.

I contacted Ergotron originally about this, but they were no help. In the end, I figured it must be a problem on my end and solved it by using washers. I shoved a bunch of washers under the bottom part of the mounting plate to help adjust for the bad angle. It works OK, enough that I’ve lived with it.

A few months ago, I upgraded my monitors, as I said. I discovered in doing so that it wasn’t a monitor problem on my end. Once again, the monitors leaned forward. This is just a badly designed mount. I ought to be able to adjust in all directions, horizontal and vertical. At the very least, if the monitors are set up with the sliding-bow pivot you see here, then they certainly shouldn’t be tilting forward as they do.

It’s also not just me. I was visiting a friend in California a few months ago. She had a dual Ergotron mount and her monitors did the same tilting thing as mine, tilting forward at the tops. She was also just as annoyed as me. But also like me, she lived with it because overall the mount is good compared to the relatively few other choices that seem to be out there.

I did contact Ergotron a second time after getting my new monitors in place, but once again, there was no help. I’ve been meaning to write up this up to visually explain it to them, so maybe there will be more luck.

FYI, top of my tech wishlist? I’d like a laptop that has a second screen that you could unfold. Forget tablet PC. Give me a laptop with two monitors, one that you can swing out when you have extra space but fold away when on an airplane. Going back to one screen is so hard — a laptop like that would be awesome.