Crappy 11" Work Laptop + Awesome 17" HP ENVY Laptop = Less Brain Pain?

Inquisitor77

So, I travel somewhat regularly for work (once a month, thereabouts), so my job basically requires that I use a laptop full time. In the office this isn't a big deal because I have a docking station and external laptops. At home, I only have my "desktop replacement" laptop available. Is there any way I can use the 17" screen on my laptop as a second monitor for my work laptop?

My Google-fu seems to say no, but I know there are veritable geniuses in this forum, so I'm hoping someone has some sort of awesome fix or workaround that might save me from serious eyestrain.

FYI, I work for a giant corporation, so I can't just VPN via my home laptop, and I'm fairly certain I can't RDP into my work laptop from my home laptop (again, unless you guys know of a way to do this).

I'm not looking to void any security procedures or anything like that. I just don't want to shell out $$$ for another monitor, especially since I really don't have the space for it at home.

Thanks guys!

Ego

MaxVista is $40 for it, I haven't used it but I've heard it works fine. They do have a free trial.

Zonescreen is free, with the caveat of it being free for personal use. I'm not sure how much a license actually costs.

Synergy is free and works well, but it doesn't actually make a second system into a display, it just lets you use one machine to control several (or vice versa or whatever mix you happen to want. So for a while I had it set up so that I could scroll my mouse from my desktop, through two laptops, to another desktop. It's nice because it means work is distributed, but not nice in the sense that you can't drag something like a browser window from one screen to another. From the sounds of it, this wouldn't work for you.

Hope this helped .

Inquisitor77

Hmm...interesting options, but it looks like none of those will work for my situation. =( Ah well, looks like I'll have to tough it out for now. Thanks!