Multi-screen Desktops??

hi, i am interested in getting a new desktop pc. Someone told me about these "multi-screen" Desktops, How do these work?? Does it mean that i can play a game in one window and surf the web in another?? Will i need to buy multiple Graphics Cards, or can i run them with a single Radeon 9800?

Any Answers greatly appreciated

you need a graphics card with multiple heads. The 9800 does have this. All you need is two montors, connect both of them, right click the desktop, properties, advanced, you should see 2 montiors there.

I ran this setup until a few days ago when my good monitor died but I'm using an nvidia card.. when playing fullscreen games (or anything that sets the resolution similarly) it will shut off one monitor.. windowed programs work just how you expect though.. I'm not sure if there's newer drivers/software that allow fullscreen games on one and web browsing etc on the other.. if you find out there is, send me a pm

oh, and, if your graphics card doesn't have two outputs (mine has VGA and DVI) then you'd need a second card.. if that's the case, I don't know about playing games and browsing at the same time.

I don't know how these work www.aten.com but you might ask around if the issues with the monitor going off while playing full screen are solved etc. You don't need another graphics card nor 2 outputs on it.

I own a Dell Inspiron with nVidiaGeForce4-go graphics laptop and have another LCD monitor plugged in. It works fine untill i play a movie file. The screen that is not containing the movie window is showing it full screen.
So if I want to watch something and do some stuff I have to minimize the movie window and i can still watch it on the other monitor.

How do games work? I don't know, I have PlayStation2 for games.

good luck