Why is this plugin so cool? Well, first it's free. Bonus.

Second, as you can see in the photo, here at SidStudioz, we practice environmentally smart techniques, which include re-using and re-pairing old equipment before simply replacing it. Here you can see, is a good old 1.33 GHz PPC G4 iBook, maxxed out to a whoppin' 1.5 GB DDR. But what's great is that Sid has it plugged into a Samsung SyncMaster 932B 19" monitor (2000:1 dynamic ratio) upon which Sid can focus much of his work.

The biggest bummer, when Sid first transitioned into the multimedia arena professionally, was that when Sid plugged it into his first monitor (a Gateway EV700) the iBook could only mirror the desktop, and that made for an entire screen of useless real estate.

Enter this awesome Screen Spanning Doctor. The thing is a simple plugin that extends the desktop, so you can use the iBook with an external monitor just like others could with their fancy PowerBook. As you can see in this little photo, the iBook G4 desktop is extended, with 2 different wallpapers even.

Sid knows this is an old plugin, but still plenty useful on the many iBooks that should still be running successfully everywhere.

In fact, Sid even has the Screen Spanning Doctor running on his older 1.07 GHz PPC G4 iBook, which also got a beefed up 7200 rpm hard drive recently. The thing works as simple as anything could. What it seems is that Apple's OS is designed to allow this functionality already, but had blocked it's use on the iBooks. This may be for hardware performance warranty reasons, or it may be just an added reason to persuade un-savvy buyer into upgrading to a PowerBook when they really didn't need to. But whatever. Sid still likes Apple computers and all the work their company does to design machines that really help streamline multimedia projects and afford their users basic security against viral threats, right out of the box.