How To Easily Manage External Displays

The other day I was trying to set up a projector for a friend who was running Windows Vista on his laptop. Being so familiar with Windows 7 I thought it would be a simple straightforward procedure, but unfortunately it wasn’t. It’s only when you go back to an older OS like Vista that you realise the small subtle changes Microsoft have made in Windows 7 and your really appreciate them.

With Windows 7 connecting to and managing an external display is really quite simple. Firstly you connect your display to your laptop/PC with a HDMI cable or VGA cable etc…

Then once it’s powered on you simply use to following keyboard shortcut;

Windows key + P

You will then see this window pop up on your screen

You can cycle through the 4 different options by pressing the “P” key

Computer Only – This will disconnect the projector entirely

Duplicate – This will display exactly what you can see on your screen on the external display

Extend – When you select the extend mode your desktop will expand into the external display giving you acres more space to work with. This is really handy especially if you want to display a movie or something on the external display and continue working at the same time on your main display. Or even if you’re a bit of a multi-tasker like me, you could have a browser open on one screen and a word document on the other.

Projector Only – This will turn off your screen and display only on the external display, I guess it’s useful if your on a laptop and want to save your battery.

So there you have it, the presentation mode in Windows 7