Two Screen Computer Setup

This is not a photo of my setup

I have a two-screen computer setup. The larger screen is a ViewSonic 1080p which is elevated behind the screen of my Toshiba laptop.  The larger screen has the best resolution of the two.  My eyes are still good enough to allow me to easily read the display even though it is about two feet away.

I've found this two-display setup to be very useful, especially when I am working on genealogy.  I display my genealogy program, RootsMagic on the big screen and I display my  free "text editor," EditPad Lite on the laptop. This is very handy when I want to add information from a text file to my genealogy file. For example, right now I am working with some information I found in a GEDCOM file on the Internet.  I loaded the GEDCOM into a "new" genealogy file and then opened that file in RootsMagic.  When I find some information in the Notes of the new file I copy the Note and paste it into my text editor.

The genealogy program allows me to have more than one genealogy file open at a time.  I have the "new" genealogy file open and I have my own file open, the one that I am updating. I select my own genealogy file as the "active" file and I refer to the laptop screen to see the information I want to enter into my own file. I'm using this technique to add records to my file. The GEDCOM file often has census and obituary information that includes information about people who don't have records in the GEDCOM.

Dick Henthorn
28 August 2014