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I need more screen real-estate for productivity work (programming, excel, etc) and am considering a 3 side-by-side setup (3X1920 x 1200). I'd like to find a way to usefully incoporate a touchscreen into this setup.

Is there any software currently available that would allow me to setup a touchcreen that can view part of an extended desktop, possibly allowing me to pan the view of the touchscreen within that view?

Alternatively, how difficult would it be to setup the touchscreen to duplicate a fixed part of the larger extended desktop (like the center monitor) while still extending the desktop across other monitors?

Is anything like either setup supported by NVidia or AMD drivers and would this necessarily require 2 graphics cards? If not, are there any software options available? I may be willing to upgrade graphics hardware if necessary, depending on expense.

I saw gimespace referenced in another question but it doesn't seem to do what I'm looking for.

Edit:

As an alternative, does anyone know if remote desktop from a high resolution tablet like the Nexus 10 could be made to work for this purpose and any software that would support scrolling across all the available screens?

I am using Windows 8 Pro version.

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  • I use Splashtop on my Nexus 10 to remote to my desktop machine with 3x2560x1440 panels. The way I have it configured, I can view one whole monitor at a time, and switch between them with a toggle in the application's menubar. I haven't really dug that far into it, but I'll see if I can get desktop panning to work with the tablet.
    – Chris Stauffer
    Commented Apr 1, 2013 at 20:10

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Theoretical

You can buy a full size 1920x1080 plasma or LCD touchscreen and just integrate it into your workflow; it should work fine. There are several models on sale by all the major manufacturers. You could even pay to have all of your monitors touchscreens, though be warned, it does add to the price.

A much more affordable solution is to use RDP as you said, with a separate client device connected to the local network (router) and a touchscreen.

Practical

The practical aspect of "what software can do this?" is off topic as it's a shopping question, but there's enough theoretical discussion here that I'm including this as a bonus.

Jump Desktop supports multiple monitors, so if you bought an Android tablet like a Nexus 10, I think this would allow you to pan around and access multiple monitors on the device. So, yes, my recommendation is RDP. Use wired ethernet if you can, but wifi if necessary. If the wifi chipset in your router is compatible, the experience should be good (fast, high bandwidth, responsive, great quality).

For the best desktop experience over RDP, please be sure to use Windows 8, as it has significant, measurable improvements in responsiveness and quality.

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  • 3 touchscreens is a no go. Too new and too few on the market for me to feel comfortable spending +2000 USD for a 3x1080p setup. The vertical orientation isn't very touch friendly anyway. I think the term I was missing the first time I tried to find info on using a remote client-server was VNC. The results I go a couple of months ago for RDP weren't very clear on whether they supported multiple monitors. I have a tablet currently so I will try this out soon.
    – meticoeus
    Commented Apr 1, 2013 at 23:04
  • I've tried using RDP configuration with Jump Desktop free version but it does not seem to allow you to log in to the same PC user account from the pc and from the remote client simultaneously.
    – meticoeus
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 9:18
  • On further investigation, reconfiguring it to use VNC works so far. I'll have to do some more digging to find something that allows screen sharing with windows 8 touch features.
    – meticoeus
    Commented Apr 3, 2013 at 10:24

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