Yeah, you should be able to do this no problem. Just plug the monitor into the laptops VGA port and then restart the machine. Once you are back in Windows, right-click on the desktop and choose "Graphics Properties..." (assuming you are using integrated Intel graphics). Then you can choose under "Display Selection", "Primary Device" and choose "External Monitor". If you have an Nvidia card on the machine then you would right-click on the desktop and choose "Nvidia Control Panel" then under "Display" -> "Setup Multiple Displays". Here you can chose your primary display. Or, on Vista/7, you can right-click the desktop, chose "Personalize", then at the bottom "Display Settings". Here you can set the settings for your displays. Hope this helps.

There may be a fn-button on the keyboard you need to press to get it to switch to the external monitor.

if you're running Win 7 after the machine boots
press the Windows-P keys
press right arrow once
Press return

That should select clone mode, and the external monitor should show a picture.
If it's anything earlier than Win 7 there is no standard way to do it, your laptop may have a key that used in combination with it's function key to toggle the external display on/off.

Guys, its a spam post. Dude tried to be slick by posting an innocent question and then later went back and added spam links to his sig.

You wonder why they would not make more posts. If it made a bunch of innocent posts, then vanished, it's signature change would have a lot more effect.

I wonder if I could get paid by one of these companies to put spam in my sig! Or how about you, Cyber? You have thousands of posts, imagine mow much putting ads in all of them would be worth!

Hey, thats not a bad idea you got there.