Serial Digital

Microsoft has updated the display settings dialog box in Windows 7. It was previously passed on from Windows 95 through to Vista with little significant change. But the new version has a couple of tricks in store.

To start with, I wasn’t able to install ATI Catalyst Control Center on my test machine with Windows 7 Beta Build 7000, because the graphics card, an ATI Radeon 7000 series, was too old. However, running the ATI installation software in compatibility mode worked successfully.

The new screen resolution dialog numbers each detected display device and indicates the active displays by showing them in blue rather than grey. Taking a leaf from Apple’s book, Windows 7 introduces a ‘Detect’ button to probe your graphics cards for any additional displays in case it hasn’t already detected them automatically.

Another handy feature is the ability to choose to clone, extend, or disable a display from the ‘Multiple displays’ drop-down box, or by pressing Windows Key + P (the shortcut key will only control two displays and is designed to help connect a projector).

Finally, Microsoft has addressed a long standing bug – in previous versions of Windows, you could enable extended desktop on a monitor, and choose a resolution, but when you clicked ‘Apply’, the new resolution would revert back to the default and you would need to choose it again. Now, once you choose to enable a currently disabled display, you are forced to press ‘Apply’ before you can start changing its settings.