[1803, au] Extended Desktop

[smarties11]

Hi All,

 

As part of our Windows 10 roll-out, I'm attempting to enforce extended desktop on classroom computers connected to a projector.

 

Two reasons; 1) from a GDPR perspective so staff have to move any windows they want projecting over to the projector screen 2) to avoid resolution mismatch between computer and projector

 

However the way Windows 10 handles extended desktop is not helping my case. By default, it remembers which screen you use each application on. This sounds useful but if a member of staff projects a Word document to the class, and closes the document down whilst it's still on the projector screen, then the next time they open any Word document it opens up on the projector screen. If this happened to be something confidential, we'd have a problem.

 

Is there any way to force all applications to open on your primary display, regardless of which screen it was last used on? I've looked around windows settings and done a bit of online research but can't find anything anywhere.

 

This is the last hurdle to banishing duplicated displays and I feel like we're going to fall at it :-(

 

Thanks!

[Sylv3r]

We tried this at the start of the year but now finding it's a bit unusable so in the process of rolling out two screens on the desk.

 

One screen is the primary display (just for staff use) and the other screen is for students / projecting.

 

We've found it easier than teachers having to turn around to work out exactly where the mouse and window is on the projector screen.

[FN-GM]

Staff not knowing what screen a window will open on is going to increase the chance of something undesirable being displayed. At least in duplicate mode they know everything will be displayed.

 

I would just use the freeze function instead.

[smarties11]

Staff not knowing what screen a window will open on is going to increase the chance of something undesirable being displayed. At least in duplicate mode they know everything will be displayed.

 

I would just use the freeze function instead.

 

Yes, exactly my point - my preference at this stage would be to default all windows to open on the primary display, however this perhaps won't be possible. We have an issue moving forward with extended desktop if we can't make this happen.

 

The problem with duplicate is that our projectors are 1280x1024 / 1024 x 768 and our monitors are all 1920x1080. So you end up with either a crappy looking projector display or a crappy looking desktop display!

 

I think everything being displayed is an issue, from a trust point of view. You're trusting that the teacher won't make a mistake, and we all know they do. It doesn't matter how many times we tell teachers not to complete their register whilst they are duplicating their screen to the class, but they still do it. Projector freeze isn't always reliable - once the computer auto locks and the screen sleeps (after 15 min here) then the projector detects the source has been disconnected and turns freeze off. Teacher then unlocks computer and displays whatever they had open on their screen to the entire class.

 

Personally I feel the teacher being in control of what is displayed on the projector screen is a more sensible approach. Extended desktop makes this possible and also means they can multitask for example if the class are watching a video.

[synaesthesia]

Yup, teach them windows + P, give them a word of warning about displaying info on projector, job done.