Enhancing Windows 8 for Multiple Monitors

This article was first published on May 21st on the MSDN blogs.

Connecting multiple monitors to a PC is one of the easiest ways to enhance your Windows experience. Plug in a second monitor and you instantly double your working surface. I’ve had a multi-monitor setup for the past 10 years; once you start using multiple monitors, you’ll never want to go back to your old setup. A multi-monitor setup allows you to be more productive by having more windows across multiple screens. We’re very excited about the ease at which tablets in Windows 8 will be able to support large screen and high resolution monitors (often through HDMI connectors), as this opens up a broad range of exciting new scenarios.

When we embarked on planning Windows 8, enhancing multi-monitor functionality was an important area to improve. A multiple monitor setup is certainly more common today than they used to be, and many technical professionals (developers, graphics professionals, architects, etc.) have started using it. Today, support for multiple monitors is standard on virtually all PC hardware, and monitor prices are at an all-time low (as of writing this post, you can purchase a 21” LED display in the $140 USD range). As a result, we continue to see increased adoption of multi-monitor configurations, both by enthusiasts and technical professionals.

Data collected through the Windows Feedback Program indicates that approximately 14% of desktop PCs and approximately 5% of laptop PCs have run with multiple monitors. It is important to note that this particular opt-in data set is enthusiast-leaning so represents the high end of usage (relative to previously shared measures that look at the entire universe of PCs), but we thought we would share this data set to reinforce another data source.