The new MacBook Pro laptops have two to four USB Type-C ports and offer much better flexibility. The Apple MacBook, rather impractically, has only one USB Type-C socket, but it gets used for everything, so you’ll need to add a multi-adapter if you want to connect it to a second monitor or USB hard disk for backup. An increasing number of laptops use a USB Type-C socket to complicate matters further, carrying data, video, and charging capabilities. You can still connect multiple screens using a dual-purpose cable, such as DVI-to-VGA, HDMI-to-DVI, or some other adapter or converter. If you have DVI and HDMI, HDMI and DisplayPort, or even VGA and any of the above connections, don’t fear.

If the inputs don’t match, or you’ve tried connecting your PC to your monitor and have no picture, scroll down for more information on adapters and converters.

If the inputs and outputs on the monitor and laptop match, happy days: you can purchase a cable for a few quid – such as this simple HDMI lead on Amazon – and hook the two together. Most modern laptops will have HDMI, DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort, or USB Type-C. The first step is to determine which type of cable you need. If you own a Windows laptop, connecting external displays should be very easy to set up.

There are also details on resolution limitations for various connections and advice on finding the right adapter if your video inputs don’t match. This article explains how to hook up your laptop to your external monitor and configure the display to work the way you want. Maybe you have one monitor dedicated to Slack and another for browsing. For example, you can display your email client on your laptop’s native screen and run Photoshop on a bigger external monitor. Essentially, having multiple displays means you don’t need to flip between applications on one screen anymore.

Connect dongle to laptop