Re: Using Laptop as a Monitor for Desktop Boxes

["wkearney99" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I was wondering if there is a way that you can hook a laptop up to a
> desktop box and have the video feed from the desktop box come up on
> your laptop screen.  I have an Dell Inspiron 8500 notebook and
> recently aquired a cheap Compaq PII desktop to use as a file server.
> I really would rather not shell out money for a monitor.  The ideal
> thing would be to somehow have the video from the dektop come into my
> laptop and be able to switch between viewing the desktop and the
> laptop on the fly.  Connections that I have on my laptop are standard:
>  USB 2.0, IEE 1394, Serial, Parallel, TV Out and VGA out.  Any
> suggestions?  Maybe I'm thinking to complicated and the ideal solution
> would be just to use a remote desktop situation over a LAN to get at
> the desktop.

Video? No not directly.  But if it's running windows 2000 server then you
can just use Remote Desktop to open a session onto it.  It's free with the
server version of the OS.  Works great.  Alternatively you could use VNC but
it's not as stable as RDP.

Another alternative, perhaps, would be to put them both behind a KVM switch
and control them from a single keyboard, monitor and mouse.  Probably not
exactly ideal.