Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Part 10: Hook up a projector...and pray

One of [my coworkers] was starting a presentation. Well, he was trying to get the projector to be detected. One of the times Windows goes most braindead is when you try to plug it in to a projector. I mean—wow.

He couldn't figure it out. I know that the basic technique is to go in to displays and basically "start clicking stuff." I did. After a couple minutes it started to work (I had no idea what I did but unlike, say, an Apple, there was no button which said "detect displays"), but a few seconds later, you could no longer mouse on to the other screen (no way to, as the Mac puts it, "mirror displays"). So then I had to go in and do it again, and it worked. His presentation loaded and showed up on the projector screen and I said to him "are you doing ANYTHING else but showing this presentation?" The answer was no, which is for the best. And they had a plate of cookies—I'd told him that if I figured it out, I wanted a cookie. And I did.

my dad responds

If you have Windows set up to spread itself over 2 screens, it gets confused when you hit the keys on a laptop to also share with a projector.

But then, Windows is just plain confused...and Mac does a better job of running Windows than Windows does. The new version of VMware does multiple snapshots and virtual machines, which is all I'd need for work. Our tech guy in Europe uses a Mac, in fact.

Oh, yeah, and my Mac always figures out the projector the first time. It does need a dongle, though.

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