How to Attach Two Monitors to a Mac Mini

Apple released the Mac Mini in 2005 as a low-priced, entry-level Macintosh Computer. It does not come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse, and has minimal upgrade capabilities.

The Mini doesn't support a dual-monitor setup natively, however there's a nifty little gadget by Matrox called the "dualHead2Go" that splits your displays horizontal lines in half and sends each half to a separate monitor. This emulates the same behavior of a graphics card with dual-monitor support, allowing you to have two monitors on one Mac Mini.

The Mac Mini will also need some help with the resolution since you'll have twice the width. You'll have to find a program that will allow you to add a custom resolution such as SwitchResX (free for 15 days, after that you'll have to pay for the software).

You can also use the dualHead2Go for notebook PC's. It's also a good alternative to installing a new dual-display graphics card in your PC. Read on to learn more.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Mac Mini Computer
• Matrox dualHead2Go
• 2 monitors capable of 1280-by-1024 or 1024-by-768 resolution
• SwitchResX

1. Download and install SwitchResX.

2. Launch SwitchResX.

3. Go to the "Resolutions" tab.

4. Select "Custom."

5. Select "New."

6. Enter 2560 for Horizontal and 1024 for Vertical, if your individual monitor resolution is 1280-by-1024. If your individual monitor's resolution is 1024-by-768, set the Horizontal to 2048 and the Vertical to 768.

7. Hit "OK."

8. Shut down your Mac Mini.

9. Connect the Mac Mini to the Matrox dualHead2Go device.

10. Connect both monitors to the Matrox dualHead2Go box.

11. Boot up your Mac Mini. You should now have a dual-monitor setup with your Mac Mini!

Tips & Warnings

• This setup makes your Mac Mini think that it has one gigantic monitor. Since it's splitting your horizontal rows in half, it's entirely possible that your windows and programs will pop up in the middle. This is just a mild annoyance and you can always move the window.
• The dualHead2Go comes with a window managing and custom resolution software called "PowerDesk SE," but this is only compatible with the Windows OS.
• Your monitor may be a little blurry, and you will probably have to play around with your monitor settings (the little buttons on the bottom of your monitor) to get the display just right.

Resources

• SwitchResX
• Matrox dualHead2Go
• More Discussion on Dual Monitors for Mac MIni

[militops]

on 5/29/2008 Sounds very easy.

[grouch]

on 12/2/2007 Wonderful how to. Problems presented and how to fix them. Being techy or not everyone has got to love those "nifty little gadgets."