iBook's (illicit?) Screen Spanning Hack

[ibidiem]

Does anybody have much experience with the screen spanning hack on the iBook? The iBook's inability to span but only mirror on an external monitor seems to be used quite often as a point in various arguments (iB vs. pB & 12" vs 14") -- can an iBook pull it off? Does the hack have negative effects on the normal operation of the OS or hardware?

And what does it do, exactly? Is it dangerous, disasterous, diabolical or really a good thing (that for some mysterious reason Apple has chosen to disallow their entry level machines from doing...)?

Also, what sort of monitor would you "recommend" (if that's the word) a new iBook to span onto?

...Inseque!

 

[robbieduncan]

Do a search. There's about a zillion thread on this already. To summarise them for you: unless you have an ancient G3 iBook (and it's got to be an old one of those) it works perfectly and is safe. As for monitors Dell 2005FPWs are pretty well thought of (I like mine).

 

[wako]

Screen spannning basically allows the computer to display a resolution other than that of the native resolution. For the 12'' PB 12'' and 14'' iBook their resolution is set at 1024x768. On the iBooks as you said only mirrors the image. For example if I had an iBook and hooked it to my 2005FPW monitor, it wont display the resolution of 1680x1150, it will just display the native resolution to the iBook of 1024x768. The screen spanning hack allows it to give you the option so you can adjust the resolution to 1680x1150.

Obviously on a PB you wouldnt need a hack like this because its not needed.