How hard are two monitors on ram?

[Josquius]

My friend has recently upgraded his monitor to a hulking big thing so he's let me borrow his old one since until now I've just been stuck hunched over my laptop, its not massivly big but better than my laptop screen but quite a ways. However I'm unsure whether to get a usb keyboard and just run my laptop as if it were a desktop purely with this monitor (wanting a external keyboard anyway as my laptop has issues) or to take advantage of all the screen space available for me and use two displays.
My laptop is a long way from the fastest thing in the world though so this is my major stumbling point. How bad on ram is having two monitors?

[Iormlund]

RAM shouldn't be a problem at all. It's your vidcard that's going to drive both monitors.

[DontSayBanana]

Iorm's correct that the load would be on the video card and not on the RAM itself.

It would depend whether you're running dual displays or have simply switched the output to VGA.  You could do it and see no real change by using a USB keyboard and mouse, closing the lid while having the computer set to only kill the display when the lid is closed, and running the monitor on VGA-out.

[Josquius]

Yeah, that it probally wouldn't just be the ram hit me after I posted it.
So anyway; how bad is it on the video card?
I'd guess it will work OK?- when my video card is running heavily (playing games) I can't be using two displays anyway.

[garbon]

Is it atypical to run dual displays (one being a laptop)?

[DontSayBanana]

Yeah, that it probally wouldn't just be the ram hit me after I posted it.
So anyway; how bad is it on the video card?

With anything other than the cheapest onboard video, not bad at all.

Garbon, I run dual monitors when I'm using GIMP or some other similar program with floating toolbars.

[garbon]

Garbon, I run dual monitors when I'm using GIMP or some other similar program with floating toolbars.

Only reason I ask is because I do it all the time and have been for years. In fact not a day goes by at my current job that I don't.

And GIMP...eww. I hate their icon.

[DontSayBanana]

Garbon, I run dual monitors when I'm using GIMP or some other similar program with floating toolbars.

Only reason I ask is because I do it all the time and have been for years. In fact not a day goes by at my current job that I don't.

And GIMP...eww. I hate their icon.

Agreed.  Problem is, since S has the MacBook in Philly and I'm on Windows, I couldn't just install our copy of Adobe CS4 on my laptop.