How do I set up my MacBookPro so that it uses a monitor?

As far as I'm concerned leaving the powerplug in all the time, will damage the battery.

I've also searched the entire web for a way to power on the mac without having to open it up every time, but I'm pretty sure that it's not possible on the unibody macs at least. I think what apple want's us to do, is having the macbook pro in sleep mode forever, so that you jus press a key to wake it up. Apparently that's the only way to do it.

So to the power plug question, perhaps you should just pull out the plug whenever you leave home, and leave it in standby mode unplugged while your gone, and plug it back in when you need to use it again.

Hope it helps, although it's confusing you can't just power it on with an external keyboard without having to open the lid.

crazy apple, also like when they didn't wan't to equip mac's with hdmi until recently, so you'd have to buy several adapters, which you have to replace everty now and then. OT sorry 🙂 sometimes Apple are weird and stubborn, but it's hard not to love their products anyway!

This is easy. Simply plug in your monitor, keyboard and mouse. Close the laptop lid so your computer goes to sleep. Then use your external keyboard to wake up the computer by pressing some keys. If the laptop lid is still down, your computer should awake with only your external monitor working. You now have a setup where you laptop is basically a desktop computer.

I've been using this setup for years and it works fine. I used it back on Leopard and Snow Leopard and I'm using it now with Mtn Lion. I just hit the space bar and my computer wakes up. You don't need any special software or terminal commands.