Verdict: DisplayFusion Extra Buttons and Hotkeysĭragging is a very easy method of moving your windows between monitors, but there is an easier way: hotkeys and buttons, and all three pieces of software we tested had this capability. To make it even better, if you desire none of the other features of DisplayFusion such as the extended taskbar, the wallpaper management part of the software is completely free of charge, which is awesome considering it’s the best at it. We’ll also mention here that all three pieces of software successfully managed screensavers, including displaying the one screensaver over all monitors, which with Ribbons screensaver looks quite awesome. You can then randomize the wallpapers on each display, choose exact image positioning, scaling and more.įurthermore, DisplayFusion easily allows you to change the logon wallpaper as well, and was the least buggy when it came to wallpaper management we had issues with Actual Multiple Monitors not remembering our dual-display randomization settings and UltraMon doesn’t come with a feature to randomize each wallpaper separately which we think is a great feature to have. You can choose to span an image across both monitors like Windows 7 can do, or you can choose separate wallpapers for each monitor. Why? Because their wallpaper and theme management features carry the best configuration options out of any of the other software. When testing our software suite there was a clear standout: DisplayFusion. Sure, you can do it, but the software we tested offers a lot more features than your standard Windows 7 way. Having a dual-screen or triple-screen wallpaper is certainly a cool effect to have, but Windows doesn’t really take this ability very far. Verdict: Actual Multiple Monitors Wallpaper/Theme Management If this is what you want your multi-display software to do, look no further. UltraMon is good if you want the basic experience without any second start menus, but Actual Multiple Monitors really does the extended taskbar well to the point of having everything pretty much identical. However, here is where Actual Multiple Monitors really shines they have effectively exactly recreated the Windows taskbar, with proper application pinning, previews, start menu, notification area, jumplists and other cool Windows 7 advanced features. UltraMon includes just your basic extension: you get Aero-like application icons in the taskbar, but without any notification area, Windows 7 features or second start button.ĭisplayFusion improves on this by giving you a second start button, time/date area, show desktop button and window previews for the applications that are open in the second window. Now, you can’t just copy the Windows taskbar and paste it into the second monitor, each company here actually had to replicate the Windows taskbar experience as best as they could in the secondary displays. This makes managing your open applications and windows on your second monitor a heck of a lot easier than default, and while it takes some getting used to, it definitely is better in the long run. With the extended taskbar, application windows that are currently open in the secondary display appear in that display’s taskbar and disappear from the main taskbar on your primary monitor. All three of our test software include a taskbar extension, and it’s surprising just how much easier it makes using secondary displays. Windows by default completely fails to extend the taskbar onto any other monitors, leaving you with a rather blank bit of space. We tested each of the software on our Windows 7 圆4 machine with two (24” 1920x1080 + 22” 1680x1050) monitors attached, removing all multi-display managers before testing the next one. In our test lab today, we have DisplayFusion, UltraMon and Actual Multiple Monitors, all of which purport to do the job better thanks to solid feature sets.īelow, we split our comparison into some of the areas that will enhance using and having those extra monitors attached to your computer. So until then, we’ve grabbed three of the best multi-display-enhancing softwares and chucked them head-to-head.Īnyone who has more than one display will know how Windows 7 currently handles it: you basically get some more pixel space to play with, you can stretch your wallpaper across both monitors and you can do some basic snapping – but really there is nothing that makes your other displays more easy to use. We’ll admit it right here and now: the current way Windows 7 manages more than one monitor attached to your computer is quite lacklustre, and so far there have been few rumours surrounding what will be happening in Windows 8.
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