3 monitors on an iMac problem

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Hi Everyone,

I have taken the step of removing my annoying error filled PC systems from my business and replaced with MACs which I have used at home for a number of years.

With my PC setup I had had a main display monitor which showed my main desktop directly in front of me, then a smaller monitor facing toward me and to the side of the main one which was a duplicate of another monitor which was mounted on the ceiling facing away from me, this was so that I could slide images, video etc onto the monitor at the side of my main screen and show customers these images etc.....

OK so I have replaced my PC with an iMac and have the main computer/monitor and these 2 other screens connected to it, one connected via a USB display port and another via the mini displayport with a vga adapter. I can use the other 2 displays as extensions to my desktop, or can mirror all 3. But I cant seem to mirror the 2 sub monitors and have the main monitor seperately within the normal monitor prefs, can anyone help! I really need to set this up as I don't want to mirror all the displays as when a customer comes to look at something on the main screen it means hiding all of the other information I may be working on before showing them as the monitor facing away from me is always on show, this is something which was easily setup on the windows environment and hopefully is possible on a mac too!....

Hopefully someone can offer a solution and i'm just being thick.....

MAC OS 10.6.6, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM
 
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Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am stumped with this one and really need it to work if possible?!?!
 
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OK, problem solved!!

I took a trip to a genius bar and......

With 3 monitors showing on the display preferences pane, make one main with the dock and the other 2 as extended desktops, then hold "alt" and click n drag one of the extended desktops on top of the other.... done

hopefully this will help someone out!
 

bobtomay

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Nice - Thanks for reporting back - had no idea you could do that.
 
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No problem....I couldn't find reference to doing that anywhere, all articles just talked about mirroring all or extended desktops! So happy it is resolved now! I can now quite happily use the mac inplace of the PC!!
 
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Hey thanks for the info. I am also trying to hook up 2 extra monitors to my iMac. Can you please clarify the connections you used. 1 - Mini DisplayPort and 2 - USB? What kind of adapter is needed for that?

How is it working out. I called Apple tech support they told me that iMac graphic card wont support two extra monitors only one.

THANKS!
 

pigoo3

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Hey thanks for the info. I am also trying to hook up 2 extra monitors to my iMac. Can you please clarify the connections you used. 1 - Mini DisplayPort and 2 - USB? What kind of adapter is needed for that?

How is it working out. I called Apple tech support they told me that iMac graphic card wont support two extra monitors only one.

THANKS!

This is an example of a device to run an extra monitor via USB.

OWC VIDU2DVIA USB to DVI/HDMI/VGA Video Display (Up... $49.99 at OWC

HTH,

- Nick
 

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