>Is it possible on any notebooks, or with any OS's to display two desktops? By this I mean... can I attach a 17" monitor to the desktop and display my dev environment and in the notebook LCD display my applications that I have compiled.
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>So far, I have only seen the ability to display the same desktop in both monitors.

AFAIK, the output for the notebooks I've seen simply switch the video for one video display to the LCD or the standard video out; it's not two separate adapters. You either need two video cards, or a dualhead like the Matrox G400 to do what you want, and I don't know of a laptop offering this.