Well the CD Copy protection thing caught me off guard. I admit since getting this for free I never played it until now so it ticked me off having to minimize the window and looking at the digital manual to find a word that the game is looking for to continue.

So recently I picked up a nice LCD monitor at a charity shop for only $10 , hooked it up to my laptop, and play the main game on the laptop screen and have the digital manual on the other.

Wasn't the "first I must make sure it is really you, so answer me three questions" copy protection introduced only in Ultima VI and later? It's used only once anyway and you should have received a text file with the answers from GOG, so there is no need for an extra monitor.

The game also uses the manual to explain most of the game world, but that's in big parts also due to the limits of floppy discs of the time. Personally, I only read through the History of Britannia book once, a lot of it is just for fluff anyway.