How to get a real advantage of the expanded screen real estate in Windows with Actual Multiple Monitors

Actual Tools, the leading provider of desktop productivity software, today announces Actual Multiple Monitors – the unique set of productivity tools aimed to enhance the usability of Windows user interface when working with multiple monitors.

Multiple display PC configurations become more and more popular. Multi-monitor systems are already highly appreciated by software developers, web designers, call center operators, online traders, stockbrokers and many other professionals, who extensively use their PC every day – greater usability and increased productivity given by the expanded screen real estate justify the cost of extra display units.

However, this medal has a reverse: larger screen estate allows having more windows open at once, which means that you have to manage them in some way. And soon enough you’ll discover that window management subsystem offered by Windows provides only very basic support for multiple monitors and does not have proper tools for a multi-monitor environment:

  • there is no standard service such as Windows Taskbar to manage windows located on secondary displays – you cannot quickly minimize, restore, or activate any particular window via its Taskbar button without moving the mouse to the primary display;
  • with no Taskbar on secondary displays you have no access to such essential controls as Start Menu, notification area or additional toolbars (including Quick Launch, Desktop, Address, Windows Media Player, etc.), which again means moving the cursor to the primary display each time you need to launch a program from the Start Menu, click some icon in the notification area or operate any toolbar (and don’t forget that you’ll need to drag ther mouse cursor back to the display you were working with!);
  • when you switch tasks using Alt-Tab, the Task Switcher service window is displayed on the primary monitor only, which is quite distracting if at the moment your attention is on a secondary display;
  • there is no quick way to move a window to a certain monitor or to maximize a window over the entire composite desktop if such need arises;

All these issues result in much more “mousing”: just imagine three monitors 1600×1200 each, aligned horizontally – and you need to drag the mouse from the rightmost monitor you are currently working with to the leftmost primary monitor and back several times an hour! It highly increases the workload on your mouse hand and may cause a repetitive strain injury (RSI). And last but not the least, it’s simply annoying and distracting, and even the new Windows 7 does not address all of these problems properly.

Actual Multiple Monitors has been developed to eliminate these drawbacks and let users get the full advantage of expanded screen real estate and ensure smooth and effective workflow. The program is the first product on the market to bring the following unique tools:







  • a full copy of Taskbar on each of the secondary displays with all indispensable controls (Start Menu, notification area and toolbars) that allows to operate windows and control the system in a familiar way from any monitor, no matter primary or secondary. Needless to say that each copy of this kind looks native to any visual theme, from Windows Classic to Windows 7 Aero!
  • a copy of Task Switcher on all secondary displays to prevent distractions when switching tasks;
  • additional Move to Monitor button in each window’s title bar allowing you to place any window onto a certain monitor with a single click;
  • improved Maximize button enabling you to expand a window over the entire composite desktop with a right click (the second right click will restore the window to its previous position/size).

These tools alone would be enough to make Actual Multiple Monitors a must-have for each multi-monitor configuration owner, but the program also provides a lot of additional features:

  • Desktop Profiles Manager allows creating and storing various desktop configurations (including relative layout of displays and their properties, such as resolution, color depth, refresh rate) and switching between them with a single click;
  • Easy Windows Dragging/Sizing enables a user to move or resize a window grabbing it by any point (with no need to hit exactly the title bar or 2-pixel wide window frame);
  • Window Snapping sticks borders of dragged/resized window to such visual limits as desktop boundaries or other windows and lets you align windows perfectly side-by-side without over-scrupulous mouse operations;
  • Desktop Icons Manager saves desktop icon layout for any desktop configuration and resolution and can restore it after the icons were messed up (the larger your desktop is, the more icons you can have on it, and the more time you’ll have to spend rearranging them manually);
  • Multi-monitor Wallpaper/Screensaver enables a user to stretch a single picture or screensaver over the entire desktop (providing the impression of seamless workspace), as well as to assign an individual picture or screensaver to each monitor to make differentiating between displays easier.

All these features combined in a single product make Actual Multiple Monitors an outstanding toolkit to increase the effectiveness of a multi-monitor Windows setup many times!

Actual Multiple Monitors is one of few Windows enhancement applications that seamlessly operate native 64-bit programs running on Windows x64 platform, and one of even fewer that allow extensive manipulations with console windows (also known as command prompt windows).