Why did he need two labtop computers in his cabin?
We see him setting up his computers, he gets the ship's computer menu on one of his labtops, then plugs something into that box and to the other labtop. Then the menu comes up on that one too.
Can anybody figure out, why he needed both of them?
Because two computers means he's twice as smart. That's how Hollywood types think...
shareI can think of a couple possibilities (although some are less likely than others considering the way it was shown in the movie).
1) One laptop to actually control the ship and the other to send false signals to the bridge. (Either because of processing power, connectors, or the extra display making it easier to control)
Also you could intercept communications (such as the access codes to the computer) from the bridge
2) Needing more processing power (not as likely since they show the same interface on both laptops)
Well, that is likely, but did he send false info to the bridge?
The officers on the bridge knew the whole time something was wrong, didn't they?
Just said it was a possibility. It might also have shown their inputs to the controls (what they wanted to happen) on that system. Initially they had control of the ship/autopilot and maybe his one laptop wasn't enough. Considering all the things he did to cause alarms around the ship (smoke bombs, etc.) I sort of doubt he was sending false signals to the bridge.
Two (or more) laptops for something like this is definitely likely (would be a lot easier to explain having two laptops than bringing an extra screen, etc.). Other than sending false information he could have been using them together in a cluster to increase processing power or redundancy.
Lots of possibilities and it is made more fun to figure out since it is older technology. (similar to explaining the communication issues in another thread)
Well this is my theory:
If you pay attention when he's first setting up his computers, you see that the one on the left is interfaced with the ships mainframe (possibly just as another 'terminal') and then he moves over to his other laptop on the right. The one on the right shows some form of startup prompt showing that the program which is running was authored by Geiger. To me this may mean that the right-hand laptop is the one with his malicious code running to intercept all of the systems, and the left-hand laptop is just a standard terminal for accessing or monitoring the systems in a 'legit' fashion.
He's getting ready to play the Speed 2 computer game with a friend and he's setting up the LAN. And I guess he was just getting antsy waiting for his friend, because I don't know what all that typing was about.
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!