wish there was a way to hook my MBP monitor up to macpro

[Saladinos]

You can access the LCD monitor's input by opening the MacBook Pro. You could probably build a switch and add a DVI input to the laptop (I did this with a VAIO a while ago that used a DVI varient, I assume the MBP does something similar).

I'm offering it simply as an alternative - I wouldn't recommend it at all. It would be a cool project for somebody experienced in hardware mods. You could even use HDMI DVI passthrough, and build a HDMI input in to the case. Could use it as a PS3 monitor or whatever. Maybe it's best to try with an old laptop first.

 

[stvcmty]

I think ScreenRecycler is what you're looking for.

I have a mac mini and was feeling a bit limited by 1 monitor. I had tried ScreenRecycler while it was in free beta, about a year and a half ago. It was slow, and it crashed fairly often. Today, I got tired of 1 monitor on my mini, and decided to give ScreenRecycler a try again. I downloaded and installed the trial. The trial is the full program, but it limits the time the client can be connected to the server to 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, it disconnects, but nothing stops a new connection from being performed. I did all the stress testing I would need an extra monitor to handle. I surfed some web pages. I used AIM a bit. I opened a spread sheet, and worked with a large spread sheet. I played with iTunes visualizer, and some video. I also looked at some pdf's using Preview. I played with some settings on the mac end as well as the display VNC end.

The extra monitor I am using is attached to a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop (Pentium M 2.1 GHz, 2GB ram), with a gigabit PC card. The mini (core 2 duo 2.33GHz, 2GB ram, OS X 10.5.5) and the laptop are on the same gigabit switch. I am using VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1.3 on Windows XP Pro SP3. The monitor I am using is 1680 by 1050, at 16 bit color depth. On the mini, I have a 1680 by 1050 monitor, running at 32 bit color depth.

It works well. I can put itunes on the ScreenRecycler monitor, and show the visualizer. If the iTunes windows is dragged as small as it can be, the visualizer is indistinguishable from on the monitor attached to the mini. If I have a fire fox window covering the entire ScreenRecycler monitor, and I scroll, it blurs a little while it scrolls, but it catches up fast enough to not be a problem for most tasks, such as reading Wikipedia Articles. Having a spread sheet program open, and working with a large sheet that spans 2 monitors is fine, even with scrolling. For writing text I notice no lag between typing on the keyboard and when things appear on the ScreenRecycler monitor, even with the iTunes visualizer running next to the window I am typing in. If I go to drag an entire window, the ScreenRecycler driver seems to wait to redraw it until I have let go of the window.

With a fast network, a VNC client that can be tweaked for compression, and tasks that do not need full screen video at insane resolutions, I think ScreenRecycler is a good piece of software. I bought the program, and I think since I have the mac mini, $25<<a mac with dual monitor support.

Checking Activity Monitor, Network, my network usage has peaked at about 15MB/s so it looks like I could optimize things a bit if I dug into the network a bit.

I think ScreenRecycler is a good solution for adding an extra monitor if hardware is not an option.

Stv