Duel screen cable question

[Tyramut]

Basically, i'm trying to use my laptop as a second monitor to my main PC.

The problem is, my current PC only has one VGA slot, my older PC's used to have one intergrated VGA and another one where the graphics card slotted in. There's also no DVI slot I can use either. It does, however, have an HDMI slot!

I kinda live in the past and don't really know much about HDMI yet, but could I use an HDMI -> VGA cable to link my pc to my laptop and would give the same results as linking via vga -> vga?

[Astarael]

I did some googling and it seemed to enforce what I thought, which was that you can't convert HDMI into VGA without messing around with a bunch of converters.

The only thing I found was this which obviously is ridiculous.

You could always attempt to get one of those HDMI > Dvi cables, and then convert the DVI to VGA using one of those easy-to-obtain and cheap converters, but i get the feeling that probably isn't going to work.

Also I just asked my boss sat next to me and he reckons you can't use a laptop as an additional screen. If he's right that makes all that bit pointless. Hope someone can give you a more concrete answer, but it doesn't look good. Could always use the laptop with the PC's monitor to dual screen, and ignore your PC.

[Tyramut]

Thanks!

And damn, always figured you could use some software to get a laptop screen working as a 2nd monitor. I mean, most of them have vga ports on the back but I guess that's output only.

[Kriz]

You can't do what you'd like to do, regardless. Your laptop is video-out, not video-in.

If all you want to do is use a spare laptop as a second monitor, you kinda can do that using software/networking.

Take a look at these sites:
Synergy

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._multimon.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/library/med...re/my-desk.jpg

The MS article is very detailed if you want the easiest guide from start to finish

[Purrrfect]

Is a "duel screen cable" like, a cable that lets the monitor and computer fight each other?