How to hook up two external monitors on a macbook pro

The one thing I hated about my macbook initially was there was no way to get dual external monitor support, at least that’s what many forums said. However after some serious research through forums, and stuff I found a way. Many people still don’t know about this so I’m writing about it so you will.

First let’s get the question that’s on your mind out of the way. Yes you can have two external monitors hooked up to your macbook pro, and close the lid, which will make it function just like a desktop.

The prerequisites

1. You need a external USB keyboard, and mouse.

2. You will need two external display’s (duh!).

3. You need to have the leopard or the snow leopard OS on your macbook pro (I’ve tested this only on the macbook pro, but it should work with others).

What do I need to buy?

1. You will need a standard Apple dongle, like the Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter (or DVI) from Apple. (My setup is on VGA, I haven’t tried it on DVI but it should work).

2. You will need to buy a compatible USB display adapter. The one I bought was the eVGA UV Plus +12. There are other adapters which are compatible, and here is a list of them. For my second monitor I didn’t need much of a high resolution (basically I just used it to keep my emails open) so I bought the UV Plus +12, but they have a +16 also which gives you better resolution.

Now the Instructions

Toss the CD that comes with the external USB display, because chances are there is no Mac version of the drivers included in the box. Download the Mac compatible drivers here, but in case for some reason you can’t download them there, go to my download page (link is above).  Now follow the installation wizard and you should be all set. Now remember in order to close the lid of your macbook, your USB keyboard and mouse must be plugged in, otherwise the macbook will go into sleep mode. That’s it.