How To Use Your NC10 With An External Monitor
The Samsung NC10’s ultrabright LED screen is amazing for most purposes. But when you’re using it at home to edit photos you may find yourself wanting a larger screen. That’s no problem because the NC10 is one of the few netbooks that makes it easy to attach an external monitor, projector or TV…
Internal Resolution
The Samsung NC10’s 10.2″ screen has a 1024 x 600 pixel display (ie. the picture is made up of 1024 horizontal dots & 600 vertical dots). To put that in perspective, a standard 17″ monitor usually has a 1280 x 1024 resolution.
Attaching the NC10 to a Monitor
The NC10 has a standard VGA output, meaning you can plug it straight into most external monitors, almost all projectors, and many TV sets. Many other netbooks lack this and you need to buy special adapters.
All you need to buy to do this is a standard VGA cable (amazon link).
When you’re using your NC10 with an external monitor there are 3 modes you can use:
- Single Display – just use the external monitor. ie your NC10 screen will be blank and everything will be displayed on the external screen.
- Cloned Display – your NC10 and the external monitor show the same thing. The best reason for doing this is for a presentation. For example, you might be stood in front of an audience using the NC10 in front of you. Behind you is a projector screen showing the same content as your screen.
- Extended Desktop – The external monitor acts as an ‘extension’ of your NC10 screen. EG, you could have photoshop displaying on the external monitor and Word displaying on your NC10 screen. You can move the mouse between the two.
To switch between different modes you just hit the ‘Function’ (Fn) key and F4 at the same time.
Changing resolution
The NC10 supports a resolution up to a massive 2048 x 1536 pixels.
Once you’ve hooked up your external monitor, you may want to change the resolution. This is just as easy as connecting the second monitor:
- Click ‘Start’ then ‘Control Panel’
- Click ‘Appearances & Themes’ then ‘Change the screen resolution’
- You should see a window showing two screens: ‘1′ & ‘2′
- Click on ‘2′ (which should be the resolution for the external monitor) and then use the ‘Screen Resolution’ slider to increase/decrease the resolution
- Click ‘apply’ to check that everything works ok. If it does, hit ‘OK’
BUT, if you hook up an external monitor, it supports a maximum resolution up to 2048 x 1536.
Neil Simpson Said,
April 28, 2009 @ 9:26 am
Hi, I’ve been trying to hook up my NC10 to a projector (Optima EX530) which I know to be working, but all I get is a flashing screen. It doesn’t matter what setting I use – clone, etc., the problem persists. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
If this is the wrong place to post questions, I apologise, but I have a presentation coming up next week and am more than slightly concerned.
Thanks
Wes Bluhm Said,
May 21, 2009 @ 10:07 am
I have hooked up an external monitor to my nc10. Pressed function F4 and changed the display to that of the monitor. However now when I press functin F4 the monitor display utility does not come up. In fact nothing happens. When I press Function F11 (for example) number lock comes on or off, so it appears the Function key is working. When I discaonnect the external display, the display on the computer becomes active. When i reconnect the external monitor it automatically” switches to that. I need my compute for presentation purposes so the ability to control the display is critical. Any help?
Jonathan Appleton Said,
June 18, 2009 @ 3:49 am
Do your brightness and sound and wireless functions work too when you use them you should see a graphic in the middle of the screen indicating a change in brightness or volume etc.
For these to work there are a couple of Samsung utilities that must be running and as I found out on my nc10 Kaspersky Security had locked down a couple of samsumg apps so werent running…
As soon as I unlocked them as trusted apps it all started working including the external monitor toggling.
If you dont user Kaspersky maybe mcafee or norton are blocking this samsung app so check in the application filtering/security tab of your security suite
hope that fixes it
jason sewell Said,
September 17, 2009 @ 6:12 am
can anyone please help me to overcome a slight obstacle. i have in car tv that only has a single yellow composite video rca phono plug input and red n white rca phonos for audio. i have sound via the nc10 headphone socket through a 3.5mm jack to twin phono cable n its crystal clear. but when i plug the vga to rca adapter into the side of the nc10 there is no picture. i tried to change the Easy Display Manager by holding Fn and F4 and it only offered me the 1 option the inbuilt LCD screen. i tried my desktop pc monitor and all 4 options appeared LCD,CRT,LCD + CRT clone and LCD+CRT Dual view.
IF i leave the wire in the nc10 but disconnect it at the desktop monitor end, the 3 other than LCD options disappear again. so This tells me that my nc10 cant find the car tv. there must be some way that i can bypass this so that i can send a video signal to my nc10 vga output socket. i had a look round the display settings and options but not sure where to sart making changes if any to resolve it. so can anyone please help?
Gordon Said,
September 24, 2009 @ 5:20 am
I’m thinking of buying an NC-10 but want to make sure I can connect it to my CRT tv. Any advice?
Lee Said,
September 29, 2009 @ 12:35 am
I recently purchased a vga to compostie lead assuming that I would be able to hook my NC10 up to Tv’s when traveling and staying in hotels. I have tried this on my tv at home and it just doesnt work. I have since read reviews saying you need to purchase a converter. Is there anyway to get the NC10 to work on a tv that does not have a VGA input?
thanks Lee
Paul Said,
November 15, 2009 @ 7:47 am
I found you need to press Fn and F4 together, this brings up a picture in the middle of the screen showing the different monitor config options eg clone, monitor only etc. To select any of these keep Fn pressed and then press f4 to toggle between the options. This owrks fine.
I didn’t even realise you could display different windows on each display, not sure how to move the mouse between the two yet.
Paul D Said,
February 17, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
Hi Guys.
I have been doing a little research on this and what I think the problem is the NC 10 only output a VGA signal were as to use just a cable with the right connector would require the NC 10 to have a TV Out option in the option 2 display.
If the TV you are trying to connect to has a PC in option again this should work ok however if like me your TV has only the Scart / component / s-Video input then a convert box is required.
Hope this helps.