Review on Planar PX2230MW Touchscreen LCD Monitor: Advanced 9.0 248mm 1920x1080 Display, Model ‎997-5983-00 by Carlos Ashan

After working with dual monitors for a short time, I've found that I enjoy working on my laptop (word processing, web searches, reading documents, etc.) while using my Outlook (calendar, email, and contacts). can display. on the second screen to my right. I've also found that I don't like moving my mouse pointer (I'm using a wireless mouse, not my laptop's touchpad) onto a second monitor to work in Outlook. I thought about getting a touchscreen monitor so I could just reach for the touchscreen monitor to scroll through my email, contacts, and calendar so my cursor stays on my laptop. I ordered Planar based on reviews and after setting it up I found that it wasn't working quite the way I wanted it to. First I found out that Planar wants to be the main monitor. When I set it up as a secondary monitor and touched the planar screen, I was actually in control of my laptop's screen. That seemed wrong to me, so I called Palnar customer service. I was initially told that Windows 7 would only allow Planar as the primary monitor. I told the guy from Planar that I could send it back if that was the case. He then told me that some people could "get it working" as a secondary monitor, which made the touchscreen work the way I wanted it to. He made it look like some sort of workaround. He persuaded me to go to the windows control panel where there is a tablet pc feature that allows you to select which monitor should have a touchscreen feature. It's not a "bypass" or "make it work" feature, as Planar support put it, but a simple setting change. I made changes and viola, I use planar as my second screen and when I touch my email I can scroll and use outlook as I wanted. The scroll function works great. It's like an iPad, I can scroll through my emails, double tap to open the email, tap a field and type a search term, etc. That part works fantastic. BUT there was another problem. I found that when I touched the planar to view email, my cursor jumped to a second monitor and I had to find it and bring it back to my laptop screen. This seemed to defeat the very reason I bought the touchscreen. I was again ready to box it up and return it. (I didn't really notice this issue on my first call to Planar, as I fiddled with the touchscreen to make sure my finger was controlling Planar and not my laptop.) Then I made a second call to Planar. I wanted to control Planar with one touch while keeping my cursor on my laptop. I was told this wouldn't work on Windows 7 - that Windows 7 wouldn't allow "two cursors" which he said I wanted to do. It made sense, but there was certainly a better solution. Again I was ready to pack it up for return. But the planar guy told me that there are third party apps that create a "second" mouse on your computer. Some do this virtually, and others allow you to connect and use a real second mouse and keyboard. (I can't see why you would need a second keyboard attached to your computer, but with two monitors you could actually have two people working on the same computer, each with their own mouse and keyboard on two monitors.) The planar type googled a few search engine queries for me and I ended up on download.com on the TeamPlayer site. The product of the outfit is called "Wonderworks". Your website is what you would expect. I downloaded TeamPlayer for free and now I can touch Planar as long as my cursor stays on my laptop. I can also get my laptop's touchpad to control Planar with a second cursor point on Planar while my wireless mouse's pointer controls the laptop. In general, once set up, it now works exactly how I want it to. I can work on my laptop and then touch my Outlook on Planar to see my calendar, email, etc. The touch function is great. Even if I double-click an email to open and reply to it, it pops up on my laptop and I can type right in front of me. I am happy. I don't know the cost of TeamPlayer software as it is the free version that I downloaded. I'll let you know if it's for me in a month and a purchase is required. I keep my fingers crossed. UPDATE: The TeamPlayer software is a free 30-day trial. I will provide another update when the trial period is up in terms of cost and/or if I can find a free alternative. UPDATE: The TeamPlayer software is prohibitively expensive to purchase. It also lacked functionality. When using the TeamPlayer dual cursor, the response time was very slow. The cursor was crawling across the screen and I couldn't figure out how to increase the speed even though the tools were set to maximum speed. UPDATE: Since TeamPlayer was insanely expensive ($500?), I got used to it not working as I hoped. I still use Planar for Outlook and my laptop for everything else. I usually touch Planar for Outlook and use a wireless infrared mouse to move the cursor back to the laptop screen. Another issue I found is that the font in the Outlook reading pane is very small because Planar has such a high resolution screen. I've read that fine print is the result of high resolution. Things get really sharp, shrinking the screen and allowing more text to fit in the overall window. In old age it is of course difficult to read without squinting. You can increase the font size, but Outlook won't let you save the changes. You should enlarge the font each time you change the new email window or reading pane. I found a third-party software company, Sperry Software, that sells an Outlook add-on called Zoom Email for Outlook that creates a persistent setting to increase the font size in the reading pane and email window. Otherwise, you have to increase the font every time you change emails, which is tedious. The Sperry product was only $4.95. BTW, Sperry's support is overseas but very helpful. For some reason my purchase key was reset to trial mode and they helped me get it back. On the plus side, when opening a PDF file - and I have a lot of them - Planar is fantastic. The PDF fills the screen and you can scroll through it with your finger and it will be easy to read. I also added a multi monitor taskbar which is free and adds a taskbar to planar. Without the multi-monitor add-on, there is no taskbar. Google MultiMon taskbar only. Thank you for appreciating my review.