Dual-Monitor Wallpaper in Windows Vista

Don’t get me wrong, I love Windows Vista.  If you’re running Microsoft’s latest OS with enough memory on a fast-enough processor, it’s light-years ahead of Windows XP in terms of functionality and beauty.  That said, there are a few quirks that need to be worked out.  One of these quirks is basic functionality for dual-monitor setups.

In Mac OS X, you can natively choose a different background for each of your monitors if you have more than one.  This seems like a pretty basic concept, does it not?  Windows XP didn’t have it and now Windows Vista is left without it as well.

Now, on Windows XP, you were able to just use the software that came with your graphics card.  NVIDIA’s nView software, as an example, allowed this type of customization.  However, nView has yet to be released on Windows Vista despite the fact that test versions of the operating system have been out for nearly two years. 

I was beta testing Windows Vista in February of 2006 in my den at home so you can’t possibly tell me NVIDIA couldn’t have been testing their own applications as early as I was.  In fact, the nView Desktop Manager for Windows Vista isn’t expected to be released until spring of 2008.  That’s over a year since Windows Vista was first released to the general public - more than shameful, in my own humble opinion.

That said, Lifehacker points out that you can, in fact, run a different wallpaper on each of your monitors using a little application called DisplayFusion from the fine folks at Binary Fortress.  It requires the .Net Framework 2.0 to run (yes, another .Net-based application you’ll be running on Windows startup) and is free.

If I wasn’t afraid to give up absolute power like I have with Windows and was focused on appearances alone, I’d get a Mac.  Sure, why not?

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