For the many years I worked remotely at home, my desk was overwhelmed with a docking station and monitors for my work computer. Now that I’ve been rid of that nuisance (i.e.’ retired’), I have the chance to set up my Mac the way I’ve wanted to before, but didn’t have the space.

In planning this, I thought I’d use the two existing monitors I had, plus a third on an adjacent desk that I was using thru an HDMI switch to connect to my Mac Mini (Plex server). I’d hoped I have three externals plus the laptop monitor.

What I found though, is that if you aren’t using thunderbolt monitors (who can afford multiples of those?), is that the Macbook Pro can only support two external monitors, unless it’s through Thunderbolt. Since I have both of my external connected through the digital to mini-dvi port (thunderbolt port), both of my existing Thunderbolt ports are in use. Without buying a Thunderbolt dock (as much as one of my monitors, though not as much as a Thunderbolt monitor), I cannot daisy chain another monitor. I have a usb to digital converter box, but I had some lag when I used it before on a Windows machine, so I’m not inclined to use it here.

To connect my monitors to the Mac, I ordered a couple of these cables from Monoprice. Hard to beat the price.

I have 20″ and 19″ Dell monitors. I don’t have enough desk space for bigger monitors if I wanted to buy them, right now.