Is your monitor big enough? Right, mine isn't either. This month I'll show how to squeeze a few more pixels out of your display and add a spare monitor for a knock-your-socks-off productivity trick.

Software and Hardware

The Annoyance:I just bought a new 19-inch LCD monitor; but after setting it up, I still don't have enough room to see all my open applications. Heck, even my spreadsheets are as cramped as they were on the old 17-incher.

The Fixes: This gripe sounds all too familiar. But luckily I have an adjustment you can try and a couple of tools that you can experiment with.

Resolution Solution: The first step is to bump up your monitor's resolution. (My 19-inch LCD is set to 1152 by 864 pixels.) But the hassle now is that the fonts are too small, right? To fix that problem, right-click the desktop, choose Properties, select the Settings tab, and use the 'Screen resolution' control. At the new resolution, the desktop icon font size might be too small, so crank that up a notch, too: Right-click the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Advanced, press I to select 'Icon' in the Item drop-down list, change the font size, and click OK, Apply. Click Advanced again to fiddle with other screen elements in the Item list, but be careful to look at the results after making each change, and write down the original font size, because there is no easy way to revert to the default setting.

Go Virtual: You can maximize your screen real estate by using virtual desktops. Virtual desktop programs let you place your open applications onto separate desktops and then quickly switch among them. I place each of my current projects on a different virtual desktop, and because I see only a few apps on each one, my view stays as clear as an azure sky. For instance, I have Microsoft Word and Excel on one desktop, Eudora and my browser on another, and my file manager and Outlook on a third.

Your graphics board may have come with a virtual desktop tool. If not, you can use Microsoft's free Virtual Desktop Manager, part of PowerToys for Windows XP; it does a decent job, but it's limited to four virtual desktops at one time. To launch the utility, right-click the taskbar and select Toolbars, Desktop Manager.

Double Vision: There's a good chance that your graphics board includes both an analog output and a digital one. If so, try connecting two monitors to one PC. Setting mine up took me under an hour, and I swear it's made a huge difference here at Bass International. On a typical day I'll keep a Word document open on one monitor and a browser on the other. Other times I'll run Eudora on one monitor and Maxthon, my IE browser plug-in, on the other. And the first time I expanded a big spreadsheet across two monitors, it brought tears of joy to my eyes.

My ATI video card easily handles two monitors (more on that in a sec), but if you'd rather not crack open your PC's case to replace the graphics board, here's a quick, easy device that does the trick: Tritton's $80 See2 USB 2.0 SVGA Adapter delivers instant display gratification by letting you connect the second monitor through a USB 2.0 port. Just install Tritton's driver, plug the second display into the See2 box, connect the device to a USB 2.0 port, and you're in business. See2 works fine with most programs--say, e-mail software, Web browsers, and word processors. Unfortunately, the performance is slower than what you'd get using a graphics card, which can cause trouble with applications such as Photoshop that require intricate pointer moves. And don't even try See2 for gaming--the lag will drive you bonkers.

If your existing graphics board has dual display outputs, simply connect the second monitor to the open port; Windows XP will recognize it automatically. If the board has only one port, and you're willing to spend some quality time inside your PC's case, ditch your current card and install one that has dual ports. My ATI AGP Radeon 7500 is almost three years old, works perfectly, and now costs about $50.

Contributing Editor Steve Bass is the author of PC Annoyances, published by O'Reilly. Contact him at hasslefreepc@pcworld.com.