Ok, I'm slowly building my own computer form scratch and I was wondering if there was any way of hooking my laptop's display up to the future computer to use it as a temporary monitor since the actual desktop's screen will be next to the last ting I'm going to buy...and since I'm only buying one major components every two weeks, it's going to take awhile.

My laptop has an nVidia GeForce Go 5200 video card in it, which features something called "nVidia Twin View". Confused yet? I sure am...but if you can help, I'd appreciate it. :rolling:

Yes, you should be able to do that easily. I can connect my laptop to the TV so you definitely be able to connect it to another monitor.

EDIT: Sorry, misread your question. Actually, I have never done it that way around but I bet it is possible.

Try this http://www.maxivista.com/


My laptop also has s-video imput. The visual quality isn't very good but it works. ;)

Hmm...no, that program won't work the way I need it to work.

I think I'm going to go to a yard sale to find a crummy old CRT monitor just to be able to get it set up and running. :rolling:

I’ve never seen a technique that would allow you to use a laptop’s monitor. The TwinView thing is a pretty standard thing across nVidia cards; it has to do with using two monitors like one extra-wide one, and won’t help here.

This probably won’t be much use if you’re intending to play games on it (because I can’t imagine the refresh rate being anywhere near up-to-scratch), but you can still use your new computer to a degree. If you can get access to a monitor briefly (to set it up), you could set up remote desktop / terminal services / pc anywhere / whatever, and remote into it. Some of these programs will allow you to relinquish control from the laptop, so it will take input from the keyboard / mouse attached to the new PC, but still output video to the laptop. Of course, all your video is still going through a network connection, so I’m not sure how it will perform when dealing with rapidly-changing screens.