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Multiple Monitors Increase Productivity
eggoeater writes "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity. The study is discussed on Tom's Hardware, EE Times, and there's a detailed press release on NEC-Mitsubishi. For those of us who use multi-monitors, this is not shocking. But maybe now that it's official, IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers."
Twice the slashdot, twice the productivity.
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
I don;t know any gamers that use multiple monitors other than those who play flight Sims.
And as far as having multiple monitors at work, it rocks. Find a cheapo 15" CRT or something and you'll be amazed at how restricted you feel if you go back to one monitor.
-- taking over the world, we are.
I use 64 in my KDE. So I'm _really_ productive.
Although I sometimes lose applications for days on end.
My father has two DVSam 17" LCDs connected to a Matrox Millennium G450. He absolutely loves this setup because it makes it much easier to work on larger tasks like copying files using Explorer or viewing multiple Web pages or viewing a Web page while typing an e-mail.
I wish I could have a dual-monitor setup.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Another study shows even greater productivity if you use NEC-Mitsubishi monitors with ATI Technologies video cards and the user has one or more University of Utah degrees.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
It's a shame that the study didn't include replacing a standard 4x3 aspect-ratio display with a wide-screen display. In my personal experience, I've found that the extra width is what really helps -- not so much the ability to have two desktops visible at once. Two 17" displays are better than one 17" display, but one 24" widescreen display is even better still. (no break in the middle, consistent color correction across the entire width, great for wide photo-editing, long code that wraps, and of course, ultra-long syslogs)
:(
Of course, two standard displays are far more economical than one widescreen display...
Though the results of the study are undoubtedly true, I find it amusing that this study is put on by a display company, graphics company, and a university that most likely got freebies or kickbacks.
News at 7: "Dell Computer, Intel, and UCLA have found that multiple processors can increase productivity."
"some other company says buying more of what they manufacture is good for you. Really. Theyve got studies they paid for to prove it!!"
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
it was my birthday recently - obviously you posted this story in order to convince my boss that buying me that extra flat-screen LCD is a cost-effective decision. happy birthday to me and thanks very much :).
:) )
(please don't mod this up, don't want the boss to see it
smd4985
I'm typing this up right now on a multi-monitor setup. I can honestly say it is one of the best ways to organize your windows and screens. I don't nearly alt-tab as much as I used to with one monitor. It's just so handy to be able to glance with your eyes and read some documentation while your code is on the other monitor, or look at a header file while you code the cpp....you get the idea :)
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
[...] has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity.
Yeah, I hate it when all developers have to share a single monitor. Sucks.
May we live long and die out
NEC funded study shows that multiple monitors are good for you.
MS funded study shows that Linux is bad for you.
Phillip Morris funded study shows that smoking is good for you.
I think I'm beginning to see a pattern...
what about virtual desktops?
Multiple displays have been around for years - I used to work on a 9 head xterminal (still in use at the nyse) - can't say it speed up my work, but it certainly heated up the box...
(Think of the lifesize p0rn possibilities)
Is this this is "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah". 2/3 of the organizations involved in the study have a vested interest in proving that a multi-monitor setup is more productive, gives you better skin, or whatever. I can see the board meeting now. "Hey Frank, I've figured out how we can just about double our sales in the business sector..."
That being said, I'll be using this article in a pitch to the wife to let me invest in some more "productivity enhancing" tools.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I replaced my dual monitor setup with an 20 inch Apple Cinema Display when I got my new G5...but I am finding myself missing the twin screens, even despite the size and aspect ratio of the gorgeous new screen...may have to find a way to get another Cinema...and a bigger desk!
Where have all the intelligent moderators ga-oh-ahn?
Personally, though it sounds odd, I had an easier time convincing my company to give every member of my team a second computer, rather than a second monitor.
So we each now have our Windows boxes for running Outlook and doing tests with IE and such, and our Linux boxes for actually doing the coding. Since the app is in Java (some server, some client), it doesn't matter much which machine it runs on. I can say that our productivity has definitely gone up quite a bit since we've gone to this setup.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
What about CDE desktops managers and things like goScreen for windows- I have my e-mail in one, slashdot in another, my exceed in a third, my spreadsheet in a fourth.
I realize the value of seeing "more at once", and I realize that virtual "Desktops" take a degree of organization on the part of the user. But I can't help but wonder if a well used virtual desktop system can't rival a multimonitor setup.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Let's see, Apple Macintosh supported multiple displays back in 1987, or there abouts. I was simply stunned by the realization in 2003 that multiple displays are found to be a Good Thing. Yawn.
According to research at an ATI-sponsored English university, the use of ATI graphics cards increases productivity.
I couldn't survive easily without multiple monitors (3) anymore. Cases in point:
* Cubase SX Audio & Midi sequencer -
Monitor 1: Track listing Monitor 2: Note/Event/Wave Editors Monitor 3: Track Mixers
Going from one monitor and having to have one type of display up at once is so slow in music production work. I don't know if my productivity is increased three times, but I do work faster these days.
I am NaN
"But maybe now that it's official, IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers."
Only by those IT managers who believe "studies" done by monitor manufacturers and video card manufacters.
Next up, why using your credit card costs you less from Mastercard International.
Is the effect that they have measured really multiple monitors or multiple desktops? If I was stuck in a Windows world where I had to constantly switch which applications are on my one display, I would be much less productive.
An double extra dose of healing CRT radiation!
(Guess we should ask for the LCDs...)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I've had dual 19" Samsung LCDs since the start of the this year. And have to agree it very nice to be able to code on one display, and have our debug/output on another.
As for gaming, X (nVidia actually) has some issues. I've found that most games don't know what to do with the dual displays (UT2003/Savage/FrozenBubble/etc) and usually just display 'centered' between the two displays. This is VERY annoying and I can't play with a seam (even if it's < 1") where most of the action is supposed to take place. Three monitors would be better since you wouldn't have a seam in the center of your POV.
My fix for this is a shell script that just turns off one display and I restart X to play my game. nVidia should really have a configuration for OpenGL games on dual head so I can "lie" to the games that I only want one display used and what display to draw on.
As for my final gripe, with nVidia drivers, you cannot seem to set which output you want for what display. I've got a GeForce4 Ti4200 with DVI/SVGA outputs. The DVI is **FAR** better quality then the SVGA so I want it to the left (read left-to-right ya know) and my SVGA to the right. However when I do this, the drivers number the displays 1,0 instead of what I'd like 0,1. So I'm left using SVGA/DVI to get 0,1.
Just my $0.00002
you can have slashdot open permanently on its own monitor.
No more time lost changing windows -> high productivity gain.
//=========== (C) Copyright 1999 Valve, L.L.C. All rights reserved. ===========
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// The contents may be used and/or copied only with the written permission of
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I've been running multiple monitors for years now, and as a developer, I can say that it has greatly increased my productivity. Instead of having to constantly task switch between my IDE, it's online reference program, and any web pages that I have open, I can just toss the IDE in one monitor and the other stuff in the second one. It really saves on time, and makes it much easier to follow what i'm doing in the code.
I used to use two monitors in my former life as an architectural draftsman...I could have one session of AutoCAD open on one monitor, and another in the second monitor. If you want to copy something, just pick it on one monitor and drag it to another. It was also useful for having reams of specifications open on one monitor while drawing their requirements on another...so there is productivity gain in the right circumstances...but as with most technology, I fear that many people will buy it just for the sake of having it...and not for any particular productivity reason.
Sorry, but I was using dual monitor Macs back in 1994-6 for Director projects, and having the stage on one screen and the score and cast on the other was the only way to go. Everytime I had to go troubleshoot a project on a PC with one dinky 14" monitor, it was painful as all hell. Macs have had this support since 1987 with the Mac II.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How many monitors does the Architect in the Matrix have in his little office? A couple hundred?
That many monitors must make you productive enough to create a Matrix.
I would be twice as productive if I didn't have to switch between slashdot and my IDE all the time.
.NET IDE if I want, but that just feels wrong somehow...
Of course, I can read Slashdot in the Visual Studio
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I'm not a programmer but I do work on computers as a tech. All but 3 people in our shop have dual monitors of one sort or another. The only 3 that don't are two administrative staff and one salesman that should be selling used cars, not computers.
Most of us have dual monitors at home as well. I for one can't stand working on a computer with only one monitor for any extended period of time. At work I keep my Outlook in one monitor off to the side and then do everything else in the other monitor. Also works great for working up quote sheets to have a browser on one screen and our quote program on another. At home I use it for gaming, but not for graphical games, more for MUDing by having multiple windows open on multiple monitors. It makes it so much easier to digest the information when you filter out most of the garbage and send it elsewhere.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
I've had two 21" monitors for my system at work, and it's made me much more productive. One of the main benefits is that I can debug rendering code much easier because I don't have to switch back and forth between the editor and the application (triggering extra repaints that screw up the codepath I'm trying to debug).
Also, it lets me put my editor (JBuilder, in most cases) on one monitor, and have a UML diagram, a specification, or a bug report, etc...on the other. And considering I was able to add the extra monitor for 300, it's totally worth it.
I have done this before. Unfortunately it was because my company was too cheap to get us dual computers - which we needed. For some jobs, where large amounts of screen real estate can make a difference it can actually be cheaper to use dual monitors than one larger monitor. It can also be more effective as well. Think of it this way, if your alt-tabbing more than 50 - 100 times a day, dual monitors are justified.
Basicly anybody that needs to visualize more than one application to do a job on a consistent basis could benefit. Where I work now I could certainly use two monitors, but it isn't an available option. Extra time scrolling and trying to find my visual place (I work with a lot of data) easily eats up a fair chunk of my day. Frankly, I'd rather have a dual 17" CRT's than a single LCD for the practical usability of dual monitors. It would also probably be cheaper.
My question relates to neck strain: while I would like to try two monitors, I am concerned that the constant looking to the left or right for the second monitor (or both in the low-angle setup) would increase strain on the neck muscles and/or neck and shoulder joints.
sPh
I've been using twinview on Mandrake 9.1 for a few months now and I like it.
At first it was annoying because when I would spawn new windows they would alternate between the two monitors. It was like playing "pong"
I finally tweaked it to somewhat limit that annoyance and it's pretty nice now. I can do a lot more at once that I could, as a matter of fact I keep several status windows running on the side display to monitor progress of several things.
It's a plus. I just hate that one of the displays insists on running at 60hz. For gods sake, I wish they would outlaw that frequency..
Honestly, I think most of the same benefits can be had by using a higher res on one monitor. I have tried multi-mon, when I first discovered you could get more than one monitor working on a PC, of course I had to spend a week connecting every monitor I could get my hands on to my PC. Even with (just) two monitors, the extra work involved in keeping track of which program is where and moving them where you want them is distracting. I vastly prefer simply having the res to display as much info as I need on a single display.
-Lod
I have a pair of 17" TFTs on my desk* and I found that my productivity dropped like a rock because the first thing I did was install the GLMatrix mode** for xscreensaver - now I just sit there for hours on end thinking how cool it looks.
* 2 computers linked with synergy - acts like one computer with two screens, but you can tie one up with heavy cycles and leave the other free for browsing etc. Works cross platform Linux/OSX/Win as well.
** Looks like the bit from the opening credits of Matrix 2 - way cooler than the old 2D xmatrix module.
Beep beep.
In another study conducted by Ford, GM and Toyota, it was discovered that driving multiple cars increases travel. It was found that individuals driving new cars, and multiple cars, not necessarily at the same time, are happier as a result. This should be hopefully a new incentive for managers to increase the wages of their employees so they can make Toyota mangers rich.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I've never "gotten" dual head. I guess two 17" monitors running at 1400x1050 are somewhat cheaper than a 21" monitor running at 2048x1536, and they both display about the same # of pixels, but doesn't the seam running down the middle of the dual-head setup really suck?
I'd like to see this study conducted with a constant amount of $ invested in either a 2-head or 1-head rig, and see which comes out on top. I'm betting on 1-head.
I've been bitching for two monitors and more RAM for months.
I'm working on a project that includes a desktop version of the app, a mobile version (small laptop out in the field) and an application server (middle ware, tier 2 whatever) in the middle. Running all this stuff in dev. mode on a single monitor is frustrating, to say the least. Running out of memory doesn't help my stress level all that much either. (A gigabyte isn't enough, boss, since SQL server sucks up at least half to be usable to me)
Though I've known this forever. At home I have an old 386 laptop connected via a nullmodem cabel, and run a dumb terminal on it. Even that's handy, to have a man page or HOWTO open on a seperate screen next to me while I tinker on the main machine.
Too bad noone in my office takes slashdot seriously , else maybe I could show them this article.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Giving this level of reporting, we'll see these study soon on slashdot:
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
...start making some dual DVI consumer cards! If both of these monitors are LCDs, I have to buy a FireGL or run one monitor in analog mode.
SCO is in Utah. Surely that counts for something. Probably even more so if the job is a lawyerly marketing kind of job, and the multiple monitors are watching stock prices.
Infuriate left and right
...And if ATI and NEC donate enough video cards and monitors to a university, they can spin positive advertis...err, studies.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
My last two and my present Mac has dual monitors, I wouldn't want to work any other way! It's even nicer to have a second computer handy when doing DVD encoding and the like. I use an old SGI O2 to keep on working & playing when the mac's processors hit 99%
More money, more productive.
Less money, less productive.
I need more money. That's all !!!
Definitely the space of a single monitor is too limited. Right now on my desk I've got a whole slew of documents and couple of open books laid out, and I'm looking at all of them (well, I'm looking @ /. actually :) ).
Some day I hope the monitor will be part of my desk, probably in a form of a flexible transparent overlay taking the *whole* area of the desk (and perhaps working in conjunction with a screen on the wall(s)). It will also be touch sensitive, so it will act as a keyboard (and mouse) as well, and I will be able to "drag" the windows that I have open (as well as the keyboard, which is just a window) across the whole desk.
Now picture virtual desktops, where I can flip from one busy desk to another!
grisha.org
If you could manage to get into the terminal room early you could grab a pair of tvi's next to each other and login twice, and be nearly twice as productive. On some desks you could actually get access to three terminals at once, heaven!
So why does two monitors beat two separate PC's?
That's funny, but why did it take so long for people to reach the conclusion in the study. The financial industry has been using multi-monitor setup for years. I'm certain there are other industries that do so as well.
I've got two words for you: 'Free Crank!'
Coffee and soda is just a half-assed solution. You've got to go the extra distance to do great things. The occasional psychotic breakdowns are also good for a few laughs and make for great teambuilding.
Having two monitors is great! You can put all your browser windows onto one and actually accomplish work on the other!!!
We used a bank of six monitors, two rows of three, one on top of the other, for planning satellite manoeuvres back in the 80's. We needed that many because X hadn't been invented and we needed several screens at the same time. It was _much_ better than using a Windows box because no screens overlapped. The problem was that each "work station" had 6 keyboards as well, so you had to be careful to type into the right one! The other solution was to use an IBM 3270 screen on the 370 mainframe. Those screens could be operated in split screen mode. You could split the screen into several horizontal sections, giving you tiled windows. This predated Windows by about 10 years.
I stole this
I use two monitors, and I agree, it's a big help, but I find that a larger monitor helps more. I have two 17"s at work, save resolution and everything, but the 3" beige division between desktops isn't always easy to forget about. I have a 19" at home, and it's much better for coding, since the screen holds more text (duh), but all of the toolbars, nav frames, etc take up precious space, and splitting that up between two monitors throws off the eye. I'm planning on a 21" monitor soon, I assume that'll be a big improvement as well.
;)
Also, for those of you who have your monitor refresh rate set at 40 hz or something, change it-- if you stare about 6" above the top of your monitor and look for the monitor in your peripheral vision, you can see the refreshing, it's weird-- that throws me off.
Also, big comfy chairs and a raise tend to raise my productivity too
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I actually prefer my own big 21" over the two 17" at my work ofcourse two 21" inch would be even better.
This should seem rather obvious. I have three screens at work (since several rounds of layoffs over the past two years has left the company with an abundance of equipment).
I have a [17"LCD] [21"CRT] [17"LCD] setup.
My CRT is where I run my primary applications, which is usually Eclipse (which unfortunately does not seem to have multi-screen support for breaking off panels to other screens).
My left LCD is where I run web browsers for running, testing code, or surfing slashdot =P
My right LCD is for my telnet/ssh terminals and system monitoring applications.
I very rarely need to juggle windows, but for when I do, I've found that a vertical task bar works best (I keep it left-most on my left LCD, at about 120 pixels wide).
The only problem I have is sometimes I forget to shift my input context to a window on another screen when I begin typing. I think it'd be cool if there were something which could sense which screen I'm looking at, and switch my input context to the window most recently used on that screen.
At home, I have one 21" monitor. What's strange is that I don't really miss the extra screens at home. I guess if I wrote code while at home I probably would, but since I'm usually just playing a game or browsing the web, I don't need the extra screen(s).
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
But what do you use for a second video card? There's no way I can get my boss to buy a dual head card and no new cards are PCI, so I'm stick with the single AGP card. I have a spare ATI Rage PCI floating around.
I'd also like to take this time to complain that IBM does not ship dual monitor capable drivers for its ATI Rage Mobility-equipped laptops. ATI claims it's supported, but depends on the laptop manufacturer to provide suitable drivers.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies...
This is almost as good as one of those "A study conducted by Microsoft and Forrester Research concludes that Windows is Holy and Linux causes lepersy" studies. NEC and ATI think you should buy another monitor and upgrade your video card. Damn, what's next? Shell Oil thinks current fuel efficiency standards are just fine? Logging company thinks spotted owls will adapt to living in underground holes?
My setup for web development is a desktop running linux and kde, and a laptop running windows.
With x2vnc it's really easy to use the desktop keyboard and mouse between the desktop and the laptop, making it really easy to have lots of terminal windows open while testing on IE the final results.
Checkout x2vnc at
http://www.hubbe.net/~hubbe/x2vnc.html
for a dual-screen, dual-OS setup.
I tried working with two monitors, but was set back by two problems.
I'm using a laptop with a 15" UXGA screen, and none of the spare CRT monitors lying around are sharp enough to work at that resolution (1600x1200). If I use a lower resolution on my attached monitor, it becomes just a little bit akward. Also there's the issue of looking up-and-to-the-right since the laptop panel is right on the desk.
My other complaint is also laptop-related. To switch to two monitors, I need to use a different XF86Config file and restart X. I haven't yet figured out how to select a particular XF86Config file (or even switch soft links) based on kernel boot parameters which could be selected from a grub/lilo menu. Maybe someone here knows how to do that?
"It doesn't even have to be an expensive proposition. If gaming performance isn't a concern, you can get an ATI Radeon 7000 VE for about $35 from NewEgg that has dual outputs; one DVI and one VGA. And I think we all know how cheap monitors are these days..."
Monitors may be cheap. But deskspace isn't plentiful either. And there's the little matter of reclaiming that space when you're not using the computer.
For the vast majority of games, multiple monitors = single monitor. Try to play with something on your other monitor during your game and your game is minimized/resolution changes/all hell breaks loose.
Hooey!
The first I used a dual monitor setup was over 12 years ago in an Autocad 9 workstation while doing a co-op project. I had grown used to the limitations of having crappy graphics and terrible mice, so I (and most of my classmates) got used to type in coordinates into the command line for ACAD and never had to worry about forgetting to turn on grid snaps, etc. Well, we went to this pharmaceutical and they had a sweet CAD rig, and it had TWO nice monitors instead of a crappy one.
What did I get out of it? A nasty neck headache. The monitors were setup with all graphics in one, and text commands on the second. Terrible neck strain because of the monitor placement.
Next multi monitor setup was working at an Army satellite network ops center, the telemetry workstation had 5 monitors but the placement was more ergonomic so it was much easier to handle than if all the info was crammed into one huge screen. That pretty much worked.
At my previous job (dot bomb) as we started shutting down branch offices we got an influx of extra equipment and eventually most of the people that had desktops were assigned a second monitor. In almost every case the second monitor translated into increased productivity. These people were doing things like building flash animations, editing videos or doing web programming, so they appreciated the increased screen space. Even our instructional designers were doing great because they could have more documents opened side-by-side.
Of course, it is awesome to have a second monitor if you are a gamer, but for most of us that work with a gazillion windows opened at the same time, having dual monitors (or for the lucky bastards, a huge widescreen monitor like the Apple studio series) is a godsend.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Yes, but try getting your boss to buy you more than one. =/
I know nothing
Of course anyone who has used MicroStation in the last 15-20 years already knows this.
grumble...damn dialog boxes....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Yes, it does improve productivity.
I can open a header file on one bottle, the code using that header on another, and be able to quickly code.
I can open a bug report on one bottle, and the responsible code on another.
I can run my debugging telnet sessions on one display, and check the code on another.
For the same amount of money, the amount of usable glass you get with two bottles vs. the amount of glass you get with one big bottle is no comparison - two 17" is better than one 19", two 19" is better than one 25", etc.
Combine 2 monitors with multiple desktops and I can really Get Stuff Done.
Now, if only I could get Q/A to eat breakfast at their desks rather than in the bacteria, I could resolve a few bugs rather than killing time on Slashdot....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Its yet another study to tell us what we already know. Ok captiain obvious, spend time and money researching NEW ideas that might actually do society some good. The only benefit to this study is maybe I can show it to my boss and convince her to let me have another monitor...but I know that won't happen.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
Can I get my character-mode emacs to spread across multiple screens?
I want more parenthesis room, but don't feel like starting X.
This is intended as a joke, BTW.
I tell ya. The one thing I hate about Windows vs. UNIX-type systems is Window's bad use of screen real estate when compared to X displays running on Linux, Solaris, etc.
For example, with the same 19" monitor in my house, I can have so many more windows open and viewable with Linux than with Windows. Also, Windows in 1280x1024 resolution or higher gets unreadable whereas I don't tend to have that problem with Linux for some reason.
So I'm not so sure about needing >=2 monitors, but perhaps to enhance the GUI readability of various OS's at higher resolutions.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I'm waiting for the one from the condom, porn and viagra industry that says sex is good for you.
... That's why that guy used several monitors in Operation Swordfish ...
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
It only took a year:
2002-10-24 02:53:52 Multi-Monitors and Increased Development Productivity? (askslashdot,programming) (accepted)
(Link)
I've been looking for a quantitative study so I could get my employer to give me 2 19" LCDs to go along with my 21" Sony CRT. =)
Working for a .com that "re-orginased" it's staff several times, we had a room full of unused monitors. Most of the team now use two monitors. It really helps with apps like Visual Studio.
I tried four monitors once, this was great, the only drawback was I kept loosing the mouse pointer.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I can see how this would hold true for people who need and benefit from multiple monitors, but I think that it is pretty safe to assume that most people don't actually need the monitors for a productivity boost. Most people using computers at the office aren't in technical jobs where they have the skills or need to do much more than a few simple tasks with the computer.
It seems to me that a few far better ways to increase productivity and reduce desktop clutter are:
- Block all chat, IM, and streaming media, and filesharing protocols at the firewall.
- Use a web proxy and to block all non-streaming media downloads, i.e. movie trailers in QuickTime.
- Don't give employees the right to install ANY software beyond the corporate baseline necessary for work.
Quote from Microsoft's Article:
The first study revealed that the users' productivity increased by 9 percent. Further studies showed even greater increases - at times up to 50 percent for tasks such as cutting and pasting.
Heh.
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
In the interest of self-interest (NEC-Mitsubishi's and mine) I immediately forwarded this article to my boss.
Maybe it's just me, but I've never heard of this sort of take on multiple monitors - that they are for gamers. I've been using multiple monitors (In fact, I've insisted on them) since 1998 at home and the office, and I've never heard this argument.
If I'd had heard it, I would of laughed - dual (or triple) monitors are usually a pain when it comes to gaming, because most games (for windows) don't handle it very well if you leave the other monitors on and 'attached' via the display settings panel. Thus, you have to go and set each extra monitor as 'unattached' before launching starcraft or some other games. Forgetting to do so can cause big issues, since in the middle of a good game of craft, moving your mouse into the other monitor's 'space' and clicking, usually by accident, can throw you back to your windows desktop and minimize the game - a very Bad Thing. Even if all you played were games that didn't suffer from this limitation, running the second monitor while gaming puts extra load on your machine - slowing down the response of your game.
Has anyone else ever heard this sort of BS from an 'IT manager' - and if so, do you know _why_ they'd have this odd misconception?
man is machine
So why doesn't MS WinXX offer VWMs?
but when do you stop...I mean your neck can only change angles so much during the day without it having some sort of long term effect i would think (let alone the radiation). 2 monitors makes a bigger difference than you think, unfortunately you dont realise that until you have two monitors. Still too many windows...would love to have three monitors...one for my code, the other for my output (what i have right now), and the third to view my logs...too lazy to alt-tab ;)
One on my desk and one on my bosses desk, both connected to my computer will definitly increase my productivity.
Where I work, we are beginning a feasibility test where we are replacing our usual two monitor arrangement (one 21" CRT and one 17" CRT) with a single Apple 23" Cinema HD display.
Our users are creative folk, working on G4s with Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, etc. Historically, the mindset has been to keep application palettes on the smaller display while the current document is open full-screen on the larger display. Usual resolutions are 1600x1200 on the 21" monitor and 1280x1024 on the 17" display.
Our test hopes to show that users not only work faster with a single 23" 1920x1200 display, but also that the single display will save money in the long run, and make associate moves easier. It should also improve ergonomics in our smaller cube workspaces, because the thinner display can be pushed back closer to the cube wall. I do think, however, that 1920x1200 might just be too low a resolution for a 23" display.
We are also beginning a migration to Panther, and we are hoping to show that Expose makes the navigation of multiple open applications more intuitive and efficient.
As resolutions increase and flat panels become larger and less expensive, I think this trend may increase. Instead of using two large, bulky CRTs, it might be easier, cheaper, and faster to work with one large high-resolution LCD.
My primary development machine has two Matrox G200 PCI (8MB) cards and runs XFree4 with xinerama across two 19" monitors. I use WindowMaker as my window manager. This allows me the use of dual monitors and multiple virtual desktops. I can honestly say that after becoming accustomed to this setup it is *painful* (in numerous ways.. reduced productivity, brain strain, etc) to do extended development on a single-headed setup.
-AC
I'm sitting on a dual monitor set-up, and must say it's really nice. However, I find that it's that much easier to read /. while working on the second monitor. In the old days we'd be able to just hide /. using alt-tab when the <insert 'wife', 'boss', et al here> comes around.
Has anyone had any unforseen problems related to this? (Myself, I'm lucky enough not to have anyone constantly looking over my shoulders, so I wouldn't know)
"...systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah...
So a monitor producer, a graphics card vendor, and a university are sitting in a bar...
Well duh - what do you think the results of a "systematic study" like this will say?
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
The only guy in my office that uses 2 monitors is also the one that resists using an IDE the most: "IDEs & syntax coloring are for newbies. Real java coders only need vi."
The irony is that usually his second monitor shows javadoc, full-screened.
Others would say that it's not only at work that this setup increases productivity, but I can't confirm this. ;)
Keebler and Nabisco have teamed up with the University of Toledo to show that a steady diet of cookies decreases heart disease.
John Ascroft and MIT have determined that electronic tracking collars increase pedestian safety
Nokia strongly insists that the N-Gage doesn't blow
Fnord.
A monitor company and video card company dump a bunch of money on people familar with the concept of polygamy,
they decide more than one of something is better.
How is this news?
Does anyone remember a Simpsons episode (or multiple episodes) where marketing droids just make up statistics to get Homer's attention... something like "we guarantee the funniness content is up 139%" or whatever?
Participants in the study considered multi-screen configurations significantly more useful than single screens and preferred multiple monitor setups on every measure of usability. They found them 29 percent more effective for tasks, 24 percent more comfortable to use in tasks and found it 39 percent easier to move around sources of information.
I'm seeing a strong correlation here. How DOES one objectively measure "comfortable to use" and whatnot?
While I'm not disputing the results of this setup (I use a multi-monitor setup myself), I think the only statistic one could reasonably measure repeatably would be:
"This setup increases screen real-estate 100%"
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
The idea of having AIM, PuTTy's etc open on the second monitor makes a lot of sense and goes along the same idea as using two monitors as at work.
What I was thinking when I read gamers I was thinking more of what games make use of multiple monitors. I know the Matrox Parahelia let you use 3 monitors for a full 120 degrees of viewing on games that had a patch available. JKII is the one game that comes to mind.
Off the top of my head I think BF42 would be great with the map on a second monitor. That'd be nice.
-- taking over the world, we are.
When I read the press release on NEC's website, it contained so much marketing droid speech that any possibility of it actually containing an objective and truthful opinion went right out the window for me. Its really odd that with today's high-budget and super evolved marketing departments, they haven't realized that making something sound legit and unbiased (even if it is biased!) is probably much better advertising than making blatant plugs for yourself in a form of speech that is so often associated with pumped-up lies. If the marketing department looked for good writers instead of fluffy advertising and econ people this problem would be picked up on immediately.
deeLo57 tries to make a moronic joke, moderators decide he is an idiot.
Now THAT is news!
I use two ViewSonic 17" LCD monitors as independent heads rather than as a single xinerama display (and have used three at one time). I certainly feel constrained when using my laptop (there are multi-head laptops availble).
If you use xinerama, a bigger monitor is better than two heads, but independent heads rock.
Has anyone else ever felt that the multiple monitor thing had detrimental effectes to his vision? I was using 2 monitors on my Mac back in 1996 and swore by it. After about a year or two though, I got "lazy eye," where one eye stares off in one direction while the other stays focused in front of you. I wonder if my eyes were trying to watch both monitors simultaneously.
Monitors generate hella heat. If you encourage people to have twice as many is that really a good thing?
In KDE I can hit CTRL+Fn to switch desktops. So I have one for email, one for development, one for the TV, etc...
And not only am I poluting less but I saved myself the extra 300$ another monitor would have cost.
Smarts I am...
I mean the "it's nice" argument only goes so far. 4GB of ram and a 7Ghz processor would be nice but the 300dB of noise the fan would make, heat, cost, etc... would outweigh the benefits.
I guess "common sense" didn't prevail today.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...studies indicate that multiple partners increases reproductivity.
I mean, have you ever tried showing a sunglasses wearing future messiah the follies of his predecessors with just one 15 inch CRT? It's not half as impressive as a whole bank of monitors.
It is not the more monitors, it is the more workspace. more pixels to fill. just mak a 4800x1200 display and I am happy. ... Maybe on a laptop to fold out. ;)
Sir, I hope you are not disparaging the objective science bought, er, *sponsored* by the NEC Monitor company. I see no reason why they should be biased against not using lots of monitors in the workplace.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I do find that having multiple desktops is extremely helpful and it's a feature I always miss on windows. The key advantage it gives you is saving time when juggling multiple projects and you have to do a context switch between them. You keep them in their seperate desktops and pick up right where you left off. To some degree, you can accomplish the same with multiple monitors.
One of the advantages of the dual monitor setup for a web developer over even a larger single monitor is for testing how something looks at multiple resolutions.
I think it would be useful to have a discussion amongst us (which is more trustworthy than some report by monitor and video card companies) about how useful dual monitor setups are and if it makes a difference if the monitors are CRT or LCD (or even plasma). Yep, some roundup would be cool, a duel of the duals.
Note that for $2800 or so, you can even get 42" plasma screens these days limited to 1024x768 resolution. If someone has one of these, how does it stack up? Seems like it wouldn't be as useful to have such a large screen constrained to that resolution.
Paul Sundling
image what this puppy would do!
A desktop computer + a laptop.
This is more cost effective than multiple monitors because I already have a laptop, and there always is a desktop computer around.
I find it very usefull, when writing some code,
even on a 19'' monitor it is not convinient to watch the code I am typing, the design document, some other bit of code, a man page, and an email client all open and visible.
It is very common to need access to this many diffrent items, and switching windows/virtual desktops, is less convinient than moving your eyes slightly to the right.
I am not surprised.
Me.
It depends on who you are sharing with. We have 5 developers in my department and 3 developers are of the female persuasion (which is good). But, I think the other male developer is of the female persuasion too! (this is very bad).
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Of course developers are more productive with more screen space. If I can have more windows open at once without overlapping them, I'll spend less time raising/lowering/rearranging them, with less disruption to my thought processes while I'm coding/testing/debugging. More information in front of me with less effort to get it keeps me in flow, which is where I want to be.
I used to have a 17" Apple monitor that I ran at 1600x1200 for development, solely to keep as much text as possible in my field of vision while working. My favorite monitor of all time was a Sun 20" monochrome 100 DPI screen - ran at something like 2000x1500.
Screen space is an extension of my short-term memory - it lets me deal with more complex things with less effort.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
you may think of dual screen for those high ranking officials of the company but we have tried using dual screen with the secretary and with some clerical people. they benefit better with the increased screen.
when running office applications, then can easily span spreadsheet across the two monitor to include more information in a single view. onm the other hand, they can also open two files they are working on whether be a document or spreadsheet to easily copy and move between them.
it also allows access to the internet with one screen and office apps on the other thereby allowing them to check for updates while being able to type documents. you can also open two browser windows to have the same benefits at the office application mentioned above.
for us noc people, we can easily open monitoring apps with one window and the console on the other thereby seeing realtime updates as we do emergency configurations. it also allows us to look at documentations and cut and paste easily wihtout having to switch windows. very handy if you are configuring lots of network devices.
in general, if you spend your time switching between apps, then probably you would want to seriously consider having multi monitor setup.
but matrox products for their multidisplay products. they have very serious products for those. from two monitors all the way to four in a card (with a dedicated ramdac for each video output) all the way to 10 using multiple cards! this avoids discoloration between each video. you have the option of analog or all dvi.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
It's the perfect solution; since an extra monitor makes you 18% more efficient, 5 of them must make you almost 100% more efficient.
So, instead of hiring 100 employees, I'll just hire one, and get him 495 extra monitors!
.. and I just sent this to my boss.
Apparently 'increased productivity' isn't a good enough justification.
Sad thing is, we have a storage room full of old monitors and vidcards we could use.
Methinks someone's necktie is a little too tight.
I've had a longstanding arguement, er, uh, commentary, about how I think having 6 virtual desktops is better than having dual monitors. I worked with dual monitors at an earlier job, and I really loved them, but once I got into Linux, I never have less than 4 virtual desktops with stuff on em. It's easier to work when you don't have everything 'piled up' on each other IMO.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Any Adobe Photoshop user who has tried multiple-monitor setups will never go back. Grab a huge monitor for the workspace, and a cheap-o 15" (or smaller) for the insane number of palettes Photoshop uses!
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
It's quite nice, though dual monotors are pretty useless for mist gaming applications, because that would put the average FPS crosshair right between the seams, but it is nice to have a fullscreen game on one screen and your IM client and email, etc on the other. If only most 3d games made it simple to switch between the 2 monitors (i.e. without having to minimize the 3d app) this would be great. There are a few disadvantages to multiple monitors however. Apparently, Windows only supports ONE video overlay at a time, so if you play a movie on one screen, and try to drag it to the other screen, the movie goes black, and some movie codecs refuse to work on a second monitor at all.
Bork Bork Bork!!
I posted the original article but I wanted to detail my own experience. I had a dell tower at work and constantly begged for another video card and monitor but I was told I'd have to have approval from the CIO since we were in a budget crunch. (I work for a LARGE corporation and the CIO is about 20 levels above me.)
I finally got fed up and brought in my own VooDoo3 2000 PCI card (which is a great card for secondary monitors BTW,) and a Samsung 17" flat screen. I had this set up for a couple months when they announced we'd be getting laptops with docking stations and we'd be losing the towers. I love my dell laptop but I was SOL for using the second monitor. Then I found a different model docking station on EBay that has two PCI slots. I bought it (again using my own money for the good of my employer...) and got it working! I had two PCI video cards in it running a total of three monitors. Then a corporate order was handed down stating we couldn't have personal hardware at work. Sheesh. I just cant win.
Luckily for me, Dell released an updated driver that allows you to use the laptop screen and an external monitor as dual monitors. Its not the same but it's better than nothing.
I'm still fighting the good fight to get the better dock and another monitor.
-Steve
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
So, wider and longer is better than having two at once?
How about three?
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
When will Xfree86 be fixed so that it will support more than 1 monitor, or has it happened recently but I haven't noticed?
Six boxes to use in the defense of liberty: letter, soap, ballot, witness, jury, ammo.
Cowboy Neal certainly seems to think so!
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I have an older 15" monitor that I use as a secondary to my 17". The 15" is on a KVM btwn my Linux Alpha server and the secondary win2k monitor. I don't use the 2nd desktop in win for too much. Winamp mostly. I haven't done too much coding in a long time, so I haven't used it for a debugger yet. It's nice to be able to have a linux box on a KVM so I can have both screen up at the same time, yet still be able to go multimonitor. The server has no use for multimonitor, most of my work is done on the win2k machine anyway.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Forget about three monitors, that fat ass better get on the subway diet before it needs three chairs!
Productivity is all well and nice, but do you really want your employees having heart attacks before they hit 30? If I were this guy's boss I'd sell two monitors and buy a treadmill!
I can generally tell code that is written using small monitors because it tends to be "local". There is not much awareness of existing functions in the same file or in related files.
I have two monitors on my desk (both larger than the laptops preferred by many these days) hooked up to a OSX box. Editing on one with BBEdit, Terminal shell open for the target machine on the other, translucent windows so I can find stuff that is buried. It may seem silly, but I honestly feel that these little details translate into better designs and code.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Display makers telling you that you need two monitors instead of one? NO, really? They care about your productivity not that they'd double sales and profits, etc.
While I think that this is great research and the fact that having more desktop space is incredibly useful, i think they stopped short of fully finding the potential related to computer monitors. They should have researched productivity related to LCD vs CRT monitors and the obvious advantages of reclaiming desk sapace. If they can put numbers to that, they make companies more likely to make the switch. Also how about incororating TV tuner cards and other video related products. While we know it is useful, the more corporations see that having a TV tuner card installed into a computer instead of having a bunch of TVs could save them money, the more we will see the use of multiple display set-ups
Car manufacturers find that using two cars makes you more productive!
Hamburger manufacturers find that using two hamburgers makes you less hungry!
Shampoo manufacturers discover that washing your hair twice makes you more attractive!
Anyone else skeptical of the source of this?
I work in an IT dept for a company of about 1000 employees. We have only about a half a dozen users with the dual-monitor setup running windows 2000 (or XP). Just those six users cause us enough support issues because of the 2 monitors. It's more difficult to install, because you have to fiddle with the CMOS settings for the default VGA device. It's not likely that this can be easily automated on a global scale if we were to roll this out to everyone.
God help you if your primary and secondary VGA adaptors have different chipsets. That can be a driver nightmare.
Then, after you get the monitors configured, there is unforseen support issues like: The monitors are so close together that they cause magnetic crosstalk.
The colors on one monitor are slightly different than the other.
The user complains that certain applications always restore the window on one monitor instead of the other. It's always something.
There is no doubt in my mind that the user's productivity has increased, but does it have to increase at the expense of the IT dept? The same result could have been achieved if the user was just given 2 PCs and a keyboard/mouse switchbox.
If your application REQUIRES me to have 2 monitors, then you wrote it wrong. This is just a work around for lazy programmers who don't want to work on the User Interface.
I've prefered using multiple monitors ever since I started programming on OpenVMS using a pair of VT220 terminals. One had the debugger in and the other the program output. I still do the same today on windows. One monitor had visual studio on, and the other has my app, winamp, slashdot, email etc.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
At work I run two machines, a Linux machine with 3 monitor Xinerama and a headless Windows2k Server. My leftmost screen is browsers and terminals, mid screen holds all my rdesktop (terminal server) connections, with one virtual destktop dedicated to a fullscreen, borderless session with my 2k Server for Outlook and, when I need it, IE. Third screen holds Evolution and GAIM/Kopete, depending on whether Kopete is feeling happy that day.
I've found this setup to be great, the middle monitor works well for switching between terminal servers.
My question though, is how to get "real" multi-head in XFree86. Xinerama works very well, but I sometimes want to drag a window between desktops, without paying for a commercial X.
I like music
like linux? there's also software that can do stuff like this for windows. there was a company once that sold software that allowed you to connect four monitors/keyboards/mice to one computer (runnig windows 98 back then). :) I prefer linux.
I don't want to know how often this machine would crash though
What would you guys recommend as a graphic card for a dual monitor setup?
Ideally, it would be nice to have dual DGI outputs, I don't know if it's possible? Cards I've seen (such as ATIs) that support dual monitors have to have one connected through the VGA plug, unless I missed something.
That is a 4 x 8 foot at todays current dot pitch. Display technology is really holding the whole thing back.
My roomie at school had a triple monitor set up. Every once in a while when he wasn't around, I would go into Windows Display Properties and rearrange the virtual positioning of the three monitors in relation to each other. He'd come back and try to move the mouse from the leftmost monitor over to the rightmost, but couldn't, because Windows thought the middle monitor was to the LEFT of the left monitor, and the rightmost monitor was below the middle one. Since I had 3 monitors to play with (imagine the possibilities with 4 or more!), I was able to derive several week's worth of entertainment out of the same prank, simply by changing the configurations. My roomie spent more time trying to figure out his monitor positions than writing code/papers/etc for class!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
My setup at the office: 2 LCD's on a cheapo GeForce4...
VS.NET is waaay better with two or more monitors. On a single monitor, things tend to get really messy with all those windowlets hanging around.
BTW, say hello to Ishikawa!
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
but I have to run it though a KVM to get it to my single monitor.
For those of us who don't know, it would be polite to explain how two monitors work. DO you have 2 keyboards and two mice, or one of each and switch active screen by a key combo?
If you have 2 keyboards then I guess that it is really fursrtating because you often find yourself typing in the wrong keyboard and before you realize that nothing has appeared on the screen No1, you have typed an entire paragraph in screen No2. Yes?
So suppose 1 keyboard. Yes. But two VGAs?
If yes, How do you configure linux/Xfree to use 2 screens? How many vgas can we put? I have a 17'' monitor and an old 14'' and a small 10''LCD. Could I use all three?
I have 4 heads right now and it is a pleasure to work with. Some people may have to get used to it, though. It took me some time to figure out the best setup. At this moment I have all the 'push' content (IRC, news ticker, GAIM, top, xmms) on the outer screens, while my inner screens show my mail, editors and documentation.
I use ion as my window manager, which allow for inter and intra screen switching with your keyboard, making your mouse almost obsolete and speeding up your work.
One word of caution though: I started with two heads and now I have four. It's kinda addictive....
I've been using dual monitors for about 8 years now and I will never, ever own a system without them. I just invested last year a heavy chunk of change into dual 23" cinema displays for my G4. Previously I had dual Sony 21" CRT's, and before that a 21 inch CRT and a 17 inch CRT.
Far from only being useful for development, the dual cinema displays allows for an almost stereo vision computing experience. They are setup in a slight angle to each other, so I don't have to turn my head much to see either of them.
For me it helps to keep things organized. Browsers, word, etc are on the right and on the left monitor are things like my RSS reader, e-mail, ITunes, etc. Apps that I just keep running and don't change. Also SSH windows, log tails, things of that sort.
When doing development I use Eclipse, so I keep a JavaDoc on the left screen and BBEdit as a scrapbook of sorts, while I put Eclipse on the right.
Personally, I think that dual head work makes for a much more cohesive and less stressful (if that can be used as a word in conjunction) computing experience.
just what i was going to say.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
...can agree with this one. When you have enough space whether it's real or virtual, you don't have to shuffle your windows constantly. The "Show Desktop" button in Windows doesn't cut it.
My typical layout is 4-6 virtual desktops and a pager. On the first desktop I run my mail client (Evolution) and any basic work related stuff that requires me to use e-mail. On my second desktop, I usually run miscellaneous short term projects. Usually multiple xterms into a few different *nix boxes or maybe an Xnest session to one of those same boxes. My third desktop is reserved for non-work related web stuff. Mozilla is usually running there with Slashdot opened and maybe my webmail as well as a few other tabs in Mozilla for any other sites I am interested in that might have been links from Mozilla. My fourth is usually Stuff like GAIM, an ssh session to my server at home (which is tunneling my private jabber server, a Vorbis stream, vnc and internal web stuff from my house). My fifth and sixth desktops are used for multiple related xterms. If I am connected to a certain host with four different sessions, it will go on desktop five and another four connections to another host on desktop six. Then all I have to do to change my focus is use the desktop pager to move from one operating mode to another. Hehehe.. it also makes a great "panic button". But I will vouch that having plenty of space to leave applications running in associated groups increases productivity instead of hunting and pecking for the right Window on the Windows task bar.
Un-news
... or they would spend about $50 per machine to add more memory and save in man-hours in about a day from quicker builds and runs.
But no one listens to me, I only know how to improve things. They'd rather see you spend 10 hours doing it the old inefficient way, than take 20 hours to rewrite and debug it, and an hour every subsequent time you have to do the task.
And yes, I realize with the 1000% or so markup businesses generally pay, the memory would actually cost more than that, but the point is still valid.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Now if only people were convinced to also use DVORAK keyboards and stop the QWERTY curse which is propagating from the age of the typewritter, the world would be a better place to live in it.
I typed this sentence in less than 0.3 seconds with my dvorak keyboard on virtual desktop 23, screen No 2 (21''), linux 2.6.1, x86-64 thunberon 4.1GHz/5GB DRM RAM.
Of course it raises productivity, it raises the most important bandwidth limitation in the whole system: the one between the user & the machine.
Hands using the keyboard & mouse going one way, and eyes watching the monitor going the other way, is a pretty limited interface. (Yeah, I know there are speakers and printers and such, but most of the information channel is keyboard, mouse, monitor.) Not a lot has happened on the keyboard/mouse end to raise input bandwidth since around 1984, but the output bandwith had grown a lot, from hopeless 10" VGA monitors (or TV's) to having things like 2 21" 1600 x 1200 monitors.
Higher monitor resolution (that's total resolution, not just screen density) makes a huge difference in how fast and how well you can obtain and comprehend information from your machine.
The GUI helps with this too- GUI's are just compression algorithms to compress information in order to pump it through the narrow bandwidth of the screen-eye-brain pipeline. It uses more machine resources in order to present things in a manner that lets your brain recognize things faster, because brains are better built for dealing with graphics than text in many ways.
More monitor space also increaeses input by compressing it (or eliminating useless steps)- if you can see more windows at once, you spend less time using your narrow input pipeline to rearrange things, and more time inputing directly where you want.
See Edward Tufte, who is always upset about people tossing out bandwidth in stupid interface design. Notably, he bashes web browsers, which usually use screen space up on
1- the OS's menu bar & other widgets
2- the web browser's menu bar, toolbar, link bar, & other widgets
3- the sites' title bar, ad banner, navigation bar, sidebar, etc.
This often leaves a couple of square inches of screen space to cram in the information on the site you're actually trying to get too, mostly wasting huge portions of your bandwidth, especially on lower resolution monitors, because all the other widgets stay the same size, and it's the content space that shrinks down to the size of a pea.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I know I'm spoiled for life. I do a lot of CAD work with Simulink, and I need as much real estate as possible. I splurged and added a second 20" monitor running 1600x1200 for my main desktop and I will never go back. Working on anything else seems like trying to perform surgery in a straightjacket! (I exaggerate, but not by much.)
For those that care, I'm running a Gateway 20", a BENQ 20" LCD (which I love), and an Asylum5200FX card with Redhat 9. I work across 3 machines so I have a seperate 2 screen desktop for each of them that I jump between. It works out very nicely.
i'm using twin 17" trins at 1600x1200 each. next week i plan to add two more with identical specs.
the concept of driving with a tiny windshield is very very accurate here... you can talk about splitting windows being infuriating, but try running just dreamweaver, photoshop and three IE instances on a 2x17" for a week... then switch back to a single. get a 21" if you like, it wont matter. you'll never forgive yourself for the experiment that spoiled your single-screen satisfaction forever.
One thing that i haven't seen mentioned here so far is RAM. It takes extra ram to keep track of that extra window space. switch from one to two? if your machine is decent you may not notice... but try running 4 screens, and that piddly 256mb of ram they gave you at the office will get old real quick.
as will mini-atx boards! that has to be the most annoying thing about corporate computers today - it's obvious how useful multiple screens are, so why does every computer you see now in offices have a mini-atx with two pci slots? and low-profile ones no less. You end up taking the metal plates off the fronts of whatever limited selection of pci video cards you can find... and dont even THINK about trying to fit a dual-head card in there...
I hope studies like this will drive manufacturers to take multiple-screen systems into consideration when designing motherboards and the like... what i'd really like to see is a mobo with three or more AGP slots. and full-height ones at that.
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
Last I heard they didn't cooperate. Nvidia's Linux drivers can do multiple monitors plus OpenGL acceleration. I'm trying to decide what my next card will be, and I'd kinda like to go ATI but currently my NVidia card doesn't need to exit the X server to play games...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A good resource for multiple monitors is here.
:-)
I use 3 monitors at home Left is API, Centre is IDE, Right is Application (plus Trillian, WinAmp etc). One you've gone double, you never want to go back
On windows 98 & XP it's dead easy. Shove in an old PCI card and away you go. I've never got it working properly with Linux.
T
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
I assume you meant DVI when you said DGI.
With that assumption in mind, I have an Asus V9560 Video Suite. It uses an nVidia GFX 5600, and has dual DVI out (and comes with two DVI->VGA adapters) as well as NTSC in and out.
If you want to use XFree86 with it, you will need to install the driver from the nVidia website (the driver that comes with X doesn't work). Also, I haven't yet tried two monitors under X yet.
If you get one of these, make sure you DON'T get the V9560 TD. It only has one DVI (the other is VGA) and lacks TV in.
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
I have a windows box and a linux box. I wanted dual monitors on both, but I didn't want to deal with two KVMs and monitors that have switched, dual inputs are expensive. So, I got three monitors... the middle one is switched by the KVM, the outer ones are dedicated to each box. The nice thing about that is you can view stuff from one box while working in the other. I've become completely addicted to it... I couldn't imagine using just two monitors! ;-)
True. And if there is ONE ting I want in both windoze and X, its a button on the keyboard tha simply switches all the windows between the two screens. I veryoften have one window open on my main display and something else (like a help text on the other). A quick-switch button would do wonders.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
...to anybody who's ever done even semi-serious research (or language study w/ a dictionary). Having multiple books open at once & being able to look from one to the other is a great argument for more desk space. (And once again, we see the beauty of the paper interface.)
You wouldn't want to stick your Nutshell book in a desk drawer every time you looked back at the code on the screen, would you? So why have to hide the browser window?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
A lot of readers already have this setup, yet the single scrolling page is rather old for a side-by-side dual monitor setup. Any chance that Slashdot can go wide-screen? I'm thinking multiple columns like a newspaper (the WSJ comes to mind, or any paper for that matter, but maybe a gray section in the center for your most preferred articles e.g. games, AskSlashdot, Monty Python). Without me purchasing software, that is.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Where I work multiple computer setups are required... as a gaming company, one must have the code up on one machine while debugging on the other. But even when one machine is not tied up with running the software, it is still far more productive to have a development machine and a communications machine... One to do traditional productive work, and one to respond to E-mail inquiries, Chat messages, keep up with bug counts, re-read plan files and schedules, etc.
As an employee, I would easily be willing to front the money for a second machine. Removing bottlenecks is both more productive and more pleasant.
The ______ Agenda
I work in engineering at a semiconductor company, and most of the engineers where I work have two machines. We have a WinNT4 PC for the regular stuff--Outlook, IE, Excel, etc. and a Sun station running Solaris for our schematics, layout, data extraction, simulations, etc. The Sun monitors all have dual inputs with a toggle switch, so they just plug both machines into it. That works out kind of like dual monitors, but with the cost of one. It is not usually an inconvenience, because the stuff on Unix is usually so unrelated to the Windows stuff that you work on one system for an hour or two at a time. He brought up a point about wanting to copy and paste across the two machines, though, like emailing some code or a screenshot of some layout. For the text, I usually just paste it into a file and then grab it with FTP(shortcut to open the program to that connection). We do have a great piece of software that I use for the screenshots. We have Exceed, which will connect from the PC to a Unix box and run that desktop in a window. I find what I want and hit printscreen to grab it.
We do use Exceed for something a lot more useful, though. We get a lot of interns here in the summers, and don't necessarily have enough Sun boxes to set one up for every intern, so they just use Exceed to do their Unix stuff. When I started here, I used that for a while before they got a Sun for me. It was really nice to be able to copy and paste the Unix stuff. It just ran a little slower on the graphic-intensive Unix stuff.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I use two monitors at work, and it speeds things up about 20-30% - especially for applications with lots of palletes or windows (Photoshop, Flash, Premiere, After Effects).
Here's a company that makes a few three-panel LCD displays that looks incredible:
http://www.panoramtech.com/products/desktop.html
Enjoy -
Once you get your head wrapped around how to use them efficently, your productivity goes up.
Isn't it more about getting them wrapped around your head efficiently? (Insert "Soviet Russia" joke here.)
I'd like one of these.
Yes, it is a photoshop (and a simple one at that), but it is based on this offering. The company also has wall-mounted systems that let you build a display in an 8x8 grid (64 heads).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Been working with my current employer for about a year and a half now... since day 1, I've had dual-19" monitors running 1600 x 1200 at 85 Hz... it hurts going home and doing contract work on 1 19" at 1600 x 1200... The increase in productivity by having a second monitor is incredible... of course, this productivity increase is evened out by the Internet and slashdot, but hey...
I've got two monitors running at work. My promary is a 19" and the other is a 17. On the 17 I keep my email open and Toad on top of that.
For some reason I always find myself needing to look at the DB in toad while I right some code. So this setup works great.
The other time is works will is installing tricky software. You can keep the instructions open on one while you do your work on the other.
I'd say 10% is right on the mark too. And sence the monitor was hanging out in the back room, that's 10% for 0 cost, not bad.
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
i.e., it isn't really fair to keep equating one company's behavior with the collective geographic morality of a region, but thanks for trying.
Someone call Belkin and let 'em know about this. It's unfortunate, but I have yet to find a KVM that has the one-for-all configuration to meet the needs of closet geeks. I would love to be multi-headed, but I'd also buy stock in wait for some more widespread support before considering it. And yes, I'd redo the graphics cards in ALL my PCs at that time.
Only two terminals? Back when I was a lad... I remember sitting in front of 5 Macs, reading a book while waiting for any one of them to finish the operation and quit showing that hourglass. Ahh the joys of a speedy 33Mhz (or was it 25 or even 16? likely a mixture but I don't remember) computer. Pagemaker did a lot of cool things, but an expert had no problem using all the capicty it had.
Back in high school it was better to just stay late, school was out at 3, bu 4 you could have as many computers as you could deal with. (I suspect any of them would be faster than the PDP you remember sharing with others too)
Linkage! And it works quite well too.
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
Just so you know, Windows 98se and later lets you just slap two seperate video cards in your machine and plug one monitor into each. (Assuming you have the correct slots, better do it with 1 AGP card and 1 PCI card rather than 2 AGP cards)
[To receptionist] Get me India.
I think the two-monitor productivity phenomenon can be generalized.
Recently, I was working on an awesome, hasn't-hit-consumers-yet product called e-paper. Basically, you have thin-film transistors covering a sheet full of a huge ton of bubbles. In each of these bubbles are reflective particles (like lots of tiny paper particles) and charged black particles (like toner). This creates the equivalent of a thin, flexible LCD display that doesn't emit light. Your eyes will thank you. It's essentially configurable paper.
Probably the best thing about two monitors is engaging in comparative coding.
Have you ever wanted to use three different articles at once while writing that code? Messing with the bookmarking/favorites feature in either web browsers or the MSDN browser can be painful. Sometimes I find myself oscillating back and forth between three articles, trying to keep all the details in my head while piecing together a complete thought.
Having two monitors allows two pertinent pieces of information without making your mental context skip a beat. Stacks of stick-up-able paper extends that benefit to any amount of information. Unlike bookmarking, ruffling through sheets of paper is a brainless exercise, so you don't lose track of your thoughts. Ask any user-interface expert worth his salt.
Compiling? Put the starcraft e-paper display on top and monitor that compile-job without switching contexts.
Oh, and make no mistake, there will be color e-paper. There's a cool trick that involves using various frequencies to make the toner particles coagulate in patterns of varying dispersions.
Once you've compiled a nice document or some cool business figures, just store the data into the e-paper ROM, disconnect the e-paper form your computer, and stick it in your briefcase.
If everyone has one, it can replace newspapers. Just insert 25 cents, put your e-paper EPROM base-unit against the Boston Globe programmer, and walk away with your daily news in hypertext. Remember that scene from back to the future?
What's really awesome is that these things (at least the bubbly e-paper base) is cheap to make.
Keep a look out. You heard it here first!
-Adam
I've been using Multi monitors at work for years. I can't go back!!
When I got my Dell C840 laptop I noticed the Gforce card was showing 2 monitor support so I quickly moved the monitor off the docking station, junked the stand and opened up the laptop screen. Wow 2 monitors!
Throw on Ultramon or Multi-mon for complete control over the desktop (for the winders crowd)
Or your favorite Linux setup
Prople kept stoping as they walked by my pit( err cube) and saying how cool it was. We got the manager over helpdesk interested enough to spring for a Matrox G550 Dual DVI card to test out for the Help desk operators.
They like it so much the desks for the new help desk office space are being designed for 2 monitors.
We tried 2 cards out.. We had an ATI Radion card but under Win2k it only works as 1 big desktop space over 2 monitors.. They Hydramon software they use to make it feel like 2 desktops really blows.. The G550 with Ultramon proved to be the way to go.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I suspect that those kinds of results are largely due to poor window management, in particular in Windows. Windows doesn't even have virtual desktops out of the box. If you use a decent window manager, I'd conjecture that multiple monitors don't help much for most applications compared to a decent high-resolution single monitor (1280x1024 or above).
Sorry, but I'm not buying into it. First of all, Mitsubishi helped sponsor it. Obviously folks, it's in their best interest to conclude that people need to buy more (or larger) new monitors.
But that aside, I'm not a big advocate of multiple monitors. Yes, they have their place - and the exceptions to the rule who are more productive with them should get them. (Why not, really? It's a less expensive request than many technology-related requests an average corporate I.T. dept. gets.)
But here's the thing: It's all too often used as an "I'm cooler/more important than you!" status symbol. Everyone wants to be the guy in the cubicle with the most impressive toys. But it's typically not needed. There are plenty of excellent screen management tools out there that make it easy to get all the screen "real estate" you need without taking up more desk space with additional monitors.
Most respectable-quality video cards support screen panning/scrolling for a virtual resolution much higher than the real one, for starters. How much does it REALLY cut into your productvity to have to scroll the screen to the side, to get to your extra windows that are open off the edge of the display?
Most GUIs (even KDE and Gnome in Linux) also support multiple virtual desktops. You can have 8 or more simulated screens ready to bring up with a single mouse click.
IMHO, the smartest investment is giving people the largest-sized economical monitor (right now, that's usually a 19" - although you can get used 21" CRTs with Sony Trinitron tubes in them for as little as about $150 from many outlets) you can find. Don't screw around with dual monitors, but be sure they have a good video card and any needed software drivers/extras to make working with what they've got as beneficial as possible.
Again, certain employees will be exceptions, such as perhaps, your CAD/CAM engineers. But treat these people on a case-by-case basis. I've met a number of engineers who can't get used to the border seperating what's supposed to be a single, large image, stretched across two different monitors. I've met others who are quite happy working with a single (even 17"!) monitor, because they're the type that has to do most of their error-finding/correcting from paper printouts. They just use the PC to work on the details, and print the entire thing out to a plotter on a huge sheet of paper to get the "big picture" afterwards.
I used to do all my music production on a dual head set up (matrox g400 with 2 21" CRT) until one of the monitors burned out. (what do you expect for $100?) Working on one monitor sucks and setting the views up so that you can see everything at once is impossible. I think the way to go for a larger desktop is an Apple Cinema display, the biggest one you can get (if you can afford it). The aspect ratio is perfect, the view is like a wall and the screen itself is incredibly sharp, like looking at paper. I'll take 2 please. I don't find I need multiple monitors when coding, but I do tend to run out of visible real estate sometimes. A single 21" CRT feels very cramped after working on one of the big apple cinema displays.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Wide screens are great for watching DVDs. But the aspect ratio is *exactly wrong* for viewing web pages and word processing, which almost always call for a portrait orientation rather than landscape. When you put Word in "Whole Page" view mode on a landscape-oriented display, a ton of screen real estate is wasted.
What we really need is for all IT departments to shell out the few extra bucks for pivoting displays.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I am currently using a Matrox G450 Max dual head, and my desktop resolution is 2048 X 768 on two 17 inch monitors. Interestingly enough slashdot seems slow right now, so on my left monitor I am reading other news articles while I wait for Slashdot to load.
If you have never tried multiple monitors, I suggest you give it a shot - even if you are only using a second card in a PCI slot. While you will be missing some features that the integrated multihead cards have, it is still superior to a single monitor.
It is extremely efficent for tasks such as working on servers etc. For example, I can have a shell open in the right monitorto a server, and have the webpage, or database open on the left monitor. I can view changes I make to the server quickly on the left monitor - and fix screw ups faster because everything is right in front of me. It sounds pretty much the same to most people who have never tried it, but it is not. The difference is subtle, but signifigant. You start to save small segments of time over the course of a day - and that all adds up.
I would really like to eventually get a Matrox Parhelia and have a third monitor thrown into the mix.
For those of you wanting to try it, get a cheap PCI card and a cheap monitor - they are easy enough to find for about $10.00 each nowdays. You will probably find that you like it, and upgrade to a nicer monitor than the $10.00 POS you started with.
However, as for the comment: IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers
So unless you are talking about articles like thisand this planetquake article You probably have not tried it for gaming.
How do I know? I have tried it.
The framerate SUCKS. Granted, I have a bad card for gaming - it is old and out of date. However, I have tried Quake and Quake 3 running over both of my monitors, and while playable there is a signifigant framerate loss. Furthermore there is the problem of aim with a dual monitor setup. Your crosshair is split between the monitors, therefore aiming becomes very confusing indeed. You would need a minimum of 3 monitors (like with the parhelia, or additional PCI) for this to be effective. A nice advantage is that it is really easy to spot opponents with such a wide FOV. The disadvantage is that you can't aim to shoot them worth a damn.
So when playing games, I use a single monitor. But I keep this card around (even though it sucks for gaming) because it has excellent desktop performance, and I am not giving dual head up now that I am used to it.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
We tested a few here at work and picked the Matrox G550 Dual DVI
It's a low profile AGP card that comes with both low profile and standard brackets so it'll mount in just about any case.
It's $148 from CDW but only comed with a Dual VGA cable.. The Dual DVI is an extra $54.
Our low buck DVI monitor pick is the NEC LCD 15460m It's a 15" LCD with a nice picture, decent speakers, DVI & VGA inputs and a USB 2.0 4 port hub in the base.
CDW wants $370 but you can get em from Dell for $350. Get the 1560X if you don't need the USB hub.
For you Winders users snag Ultramon" to gain extra control over your new dual monitor setup.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I started using dualhead about 2 years agog, and then added a third just for the hell of it. Currently I've got 1 21" in the middle for primarty work and a 17" on either side for reference or monitoring. At one point in time I had a 14" sitting on top of one of the 17". The ultimate goal howver is to have 4 flat panels around my center 21" monitor. When flatpanels fall on you fue to an earthquake they tens to do less damage than CRT's. There's really nothing like being able to have all of your reference sites open and visible at the same time plus a debuging/cl window and a source editing window. Word of advise though. XFree and xinerama will suck the life out of any system memory you have.
-jj-
This study was paid for by NEC who makes monitors, and ATI who makes graphic cards. The study concludes that more monitors (and graphic cards, which you usually need one of per monitor) will boost the economy and save the world. Well that's a very unexpected conclusion, isn't it?
Ah,ah. Technology only takes money away!
Go ask any PHB or CIO? Especially these new MBA students who are just out of school. Its great to allow such people with broad experience make such critical decsions.
They should switch to typewritters. After all spending less = higher productivity and efficiany.
Maybe they should have only 1 employee on a typewritter! Think about how much money they could save and how productivite they can be!
Whats next, IT workers are worth more then minimal wage indians? Sheesh
http://saveie6.com/
"start with 56 lb of cheese..."
(to paraphrase an old Roz Chast cartoon..)
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
...but only for their employees with a lot of clout.
I used to work at a financial company that had a trading desk. Each of these guys had THREE of the biggest LCD monitors I'd ever seen. Big real-time stock monitor program on the left, news feed/research on the right, random stuff in the middle. (And this was a couple years ago, when a really big LCD monitor would put a serious dent in anyone's wallet.)
I, on the other hand, being a lowly programmer, only got one 17-inch CRT. (I prefer CRT anyway, but that's another story.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This is interesting. I was shopping at Fry's to upgrade my Daughters PC a few weeks ago, and ran into somone who thought I knew somthing about PC's, and wanted to add a second monitor to his PC. I thought back to the days I was introduced to MIT X-Windows days in '89. The environment DISPLAY = machine:0.0 was machine, videocard:monitor... meaning you could in theory support multiple monitors on each display card.
My reaction was that the card wasn't going to be the problem, but that software was. When I got home, it occured to me that most PC's have only 1 AGP slot, and most video cards are AGP.
With Flat panel monitors being all the rage these days... and video monitors being almost "free", this means you could have a REALLY COOL gaming setup with three monitors crunching away to give you three perspectives... what if you could look behind you while you shot bad guys!
Looks like I need to spend some $$ on new hardware... cool! I guess the upturn in the economy will be driven by flat panel monitors. -- Ross
Ross Youngblood
Fair enough. I don't use Alt-Tab either, I rebound my numeric keypad:
kp0 = mozilla new tab
kp1 = emacs
kp4 = terminal
kp7 = mail reader
and similarly
kp. = maximize vertically
kp+ = maximize
kp- = iconify
kp* = raise
For the frequently-used apps, this means I find them in order-1 time, without searching the list. On the other hand, I do miss having the numeric keypad for number entry.
Somehow I thought the best way of expressing this setup was to dumb it down to Alt-Tab.
You wouldn't believe how many MS Windows users I've run across who think they have to close the application down to start another one... It drives me nuts how little "training" people get about using a PC with a GUI-based OS.
;) Making that 2nd monitor more than just a place to show a desktop background.
Putting two monitors in front of them MIGHT get them to attempt to open 2 applications at one time. If it was 5 years ago, I'd probably doubt this but I've heard MS Windows can run more than one application acceptably today.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
with Dualhead Cards. Something about the Driver Model only being able to address it as a single workspace. Two Video Cards, worked correctly, and it works fine in 2000 and XP, dualhead card or two (or more) video cards.
Dual head .. he he, I have several monitors connected to one machine, and two more left and right connected via synergy ..
..
...
.. the cheats in another window [i suck] ...
...
...
.. no matter the resolution.
There are so many uses I couldnt possibly list them. Lets see
One monitor displays network statistics, one system logs, one my media player, one the playlist (!) and I usually have remote logins to other machines
The other day I was playing Grand Theft Auto, and had maps to all the cities displayed, with detail on certain areas
This is work and play, but one day I'll look forward to just having one 5 foot by 7 foot LCD on the wall
Oh, and by the way, there are going to be some serious limitations found as more and more people use multiple monitors, besides the programs that are designed by default to run on one screen, alot of programs allow you to detatch certain windows, but wont let you move them off of that particular desktop!
Or, I love having to move certain programs to their monitor, over, and over, and over
Anyway, there are many monitoring applications, and some information just wont fit on one screen
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
I hate going back to anything less. Windoze is the worst with it's single desktop, crappy iconification and pathetic multitasking. Microsoft's bloaty GUI blows in general. I have not seen Apple's OSX yet. All the bad things people say about X are silly.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have two desktop machines sitting side by side. One of them is always turned on. If I want to "boost my productivity", I boot up the other one. The first one notices this, and automatically runs x2x tunneled over ssh. Presto, suddenly I have a single desktop consisting of two different physical machines. I can completely bog down one machine, and still have the other one be snappy. The downside of this setup is that you can't drag apps from one screen to the other (although copy/paste across screens does work), but in my experience that's not something you really truly miss as opposed to a dual-head setup on a single box.
You can also do this with a linux box and a windows machine with x2vnc, though I imagine tunneling over ssh becomes consideraly less obvious in that case.
Have had this setup for two years now. Works like a champ.
one that's twice the height while the same width. It doesn't even need to be refresh quickly. Take a widescreen monitor and put it on it's side.
/. frontpage can appear in three screens instead of six.
Basically, I'd prefer more vertical space. A function can be twice as large and still be manageable.
Also, the
This is not my sig.
I don't know if I can ever use anything less than 5 screens again. Until you have tried working with multiple monitors, you will never grasp the benefit they give you. And no, I don't play video games, other than Civilization.
I am running an ATI 9700, with 2 20.4" LCD Screens running at 1600x1200. I also have an ATI 7500 with 1 20.4" LCD Running at 1600x1200 and 1 21" CRT running at 1600x1200. Then I also threw in an old Matrox 8MB Video card, and it is hooked up to a 15" LCD running at 1024x768. I have the three 20.4" LCDs centered on my desk and use those for my development area. I have the 15" LCD rigged up above the center screen and run top from our two servers on there. then on the CRT I always have my email up and mp3 player, etc.
OLVWM does that too. It's also nice to have an unlimited number of desktops too. With as many desktops as you want, you don't feel as inclined to buy a $200 "dual head" video card and a second flat screen monitor and are much happier with your 17" CRT. Do I need to mention "ssh -X hostname" logs you in graphically to all your computers? Yes, more than one user can run Star Office, Open Office, Kword, Emacs and or Vi at the same time. That's not alowed by the EULA for M$ Word, even if you were clever enough.
I'd be surprised if there isn't a hack for XP to do the same thing
Hack, hack, and still pay through the nose, why bother? Apt-get yourself out of that mess. Once you've got your modelines set up, that's it, video just works. Go see for yourself at www.hillnotes.org. The stuff I've got posted is all easy to do. Anyone who can figure out the Windoze hack game is more than up to the task of learning free software. When it's all said and done, you get way more for your free software effort than you can buy from Bill and friends.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm pretty sure the two 21" monitors running at 1600x1200 that I am borrowing from work are cheaper than one 3200x1200 monitor (if such a beast exists).
This is just NEC's version of the old "Lather. Rinse. Repeat..
was the fact that I couldn't just throw the mouse over to the right side of the left-hand screen in order to use the scroll bar... I had to move slowly and be careful that I didn't move the cursor too far past the scroll bar. It sounds like a small thing, but it got REALLY annoying really fast.
"... the human eye is better at reading narrow columns (that's why newspapers are layed out as they are). That's why you get all sorts of cruft down the side of webpages.
I posted a possible solution for this issue. I'm seeing the benefits of using two monitors, but since the desk-space doesn't always allow more than one monitor, why not a taller monitor? Bigger, yes, but along one dimension. It may even be used in conjunction to the dual monitor usage (with this taller one devoted to coding).
Of course, I haven't seen one so AFAIK it's just an idea at this point. But I'd be interested...
This is not my sig.
Wouldn't it be good to divide a 1600x1200 monitor in 4 virtual 800x600 screens? Maximising an app would only maximise it on the virtual 800x600 monitor on screen. A widescreen 2400x1200 tft would be ok as well...
less deskspace meant I couldn't fit paperwork on so easily and ended up getting distracted. need bigger desk too ;)
A blog I run for the wealth
I've been using two monitors for quite some time, I think since Windows98 supported it (badly I should add). People usually give me a weird look when I tell them, but now I can print this out and show them that I'm not insane, I'm an innovator :) :) ). It puts itself right next to the window controls on the top right and gives you tons of control. i.e. I can easily set a window to be ontop of all the others, send a window to a paticular monitor, maximize a window over multiple monitors, and much more. I don't know if the new ATI cards do this, but if they don't, they should.
:)
For windows, imho the only way to go is with a high end Nvidia card as the primary and a decent secondary card. Before you ati guys start frothing at the mouth, let me explain.
Nvidia's detenators come with a great feature called Nview. Nview is designed to make it easier to work with dual monitors and luckily it works with a non-nvidia secondary card (mine is an ati 3d rage pro
Of course gamers can understand the benefit of dual monitors. The benefits aren't limited to flight sims either. I tend to keep an irc window or a messenger window open on my secondary monitor while I'm full screen in a game on my primary. Or even watch tv with my tv tuner card. Not to mention how convenient it is when you are outputing to a tv and need a place to keep controls open for sound, video, etc. Its just convinent as hell.
Course there are some problems. Some games don't properly scroll because the cursor ends up on the second monitor. I'm stuck using the arrow keys to move around in Civ3, a total pain in the ass. Not to mention the icon the amount of icons I can fit on the screen. I suggest anyone who has dual monitors switch their icon size to atleast 96x96. Mine are 128x128 and it'll amaze you how much easier your machine is to use.
Oh yeah, 2 wallpapers is pretty sweet too
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
One died on me. I have to live with only one monitor for homework and work. I feel handicaped because of it.
I trade one monitor with more mouse clicks plus time. Two monitors so far give me the most productivity boost, but it doesn't mean three will give me more.
I believe [sic] means "I know this is (or may be) wrong, but I'm quoting it verbatim from another source". I use (sp?) to mean "I don't know if I'm spelling this right or not.
Dual the radiation. Sucks. But at least I'll know that at least now I've got an even computer tan. :D
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
... and I friggin LOVE it. I love putting all the damn pallets/output windows etc, on one screen and just my code on another. Or the doc on one screen, or the web page I'm debugging. It really is just, better.
As an added benefit, with more scren real estate, I don't feel the need to raise my resolution to fit all the pallets, etc, so I can keep my main code window at a big 1024 by 768. No more eye Strain! Sure, I could raise the font size, but in some stuff it is hard (like web sites with hard-coded font sizes... don't get me started on THAT!)
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Monitors have finally gotten to the point where programmers can stand to stare at them all day, and now the popularity of embedded devices means we get to stare at 3-inch screens half the time anyway.
I'm pretty surprised that monitors are still so small. Even at 21 inches, they're still too small.
From 17 inches to only 21 inches in about 10 years? Ridiculous!
Monitors should be at least 3 times 21 inches wide by 2 times 21 inches high by now and lcd flat screen with a resolution equal to the best 21 inch lcd flat screen displays available -- and seamless, not multi-monitor. They should be available for under a thousand dollars. Now, I would love to have multiple monitors of this size!
Imagine: Three 63 inch by 42 inch monitors.
Of course, there should be 126 inch by 84 inch monitors available for business clients...and larger as well.
And of course each display having a 4000 line resolution would be nice as well...
I used to use multiple monitos back in the early 90's when I was developing for the Mac, and yeah they are awsome! I was using one monitor for editing/running the app, while using the debugger on the other. Macs had it so easy that you could arrange how you want the monitor to span. This is one thing I really missed when I finally had to switch to the PC. Now about a decade later, here we are again!
Multiple monitors, placed properly, will also radiate your whole face and head evenly and give you that even 16-hour-run pallor (with evenly redened eyes) that the ladies really go for.
s'wut i sed.
In BeOS I can have up to 32 virtual monitors for the price of 1... besides it saves the neck :)
Besides, if it's to use them like that...
I just sent this to my boss. I'm sure that I will be seeing my new work station within the week!
This is the perfect time to point out Synergy. I've got a multimonitor surface with Windows running on one monitor and Linux on the other - although if you didn't know, you'd just assume that it was a regular multimonitor setup.
Your cursor travels between the computers, they blank and unblank at the same time, and you can even copy and paste between desktops - it's awesome, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a multimon-like desktop but has more than one PC on their desktop.
I had previously attempted to use a multi-monitor (MM) under W2k but had trouble finding PCI cards that would work as secondary display devices. Thought I'd try it again under XPP earlier this year and it worked nicely. Have tried both 2x and 3x 15" LCD displays. I have seen noticeable benefits of MM setups. These include...
* drag and drop/cut and paste is so much easier
* being able to view a document on one screen whilst typing into another window that has focus is very useful
* the ability to have multiple documents open, be it reference material, other word processing documents, spreadsheets is a real boon
* greatly reduced clicking on the task bar to switch between apps, or the use of alt-tab
* having the MM on the same plane suits the eyes panoramic vision - I would find it much harder to look up and down if monitors were piled high.
I thought about the widescreen option, but they were wanting 100% more $ for 25% extra screen estate. Basically I could have 1 17" widescreen, or two 15" LCD's and the extra adapter for the same price. This gave 100% more real estate over one monitor (by pixel), vs 25% for changing the primary to a widescreen.
I have got older LCDs (Philips 150B2) which have a bevel of around 25mm - this is huge. I get around this by overlapping the bevels. I am starting to think about selling these and purchasing the later models which have much smaller bevels at the edges.
I hate going back to using my laptop when on the road now. You really change you work habit on a multiple monitor. I've had some friends and colleagues use the MM setup too, and they quickly adjust and really like it!
So let me get this straight, a study sponsored by NEC-Mitsubishi and ATi comes to the conclusion that the more monitors we buy the better?
As I said, *some* people are exceptions to the rule and multiple monitors make great sense for them. It sounds like you're one of the exceptions.
The fact is, most people really only have one task to work on at a given time. Everything else that' running in the background is either a distraction, or supposed to be happening invisibly while they work on their project.
Email, for example, is fine to leave running, minimized. It can notify you in many different non-intrusive ways that new messages came in - and you can bring it back up and look at it whenever you get the time. There's not typically a pressing need to leave email open, full-screen, on a seperate monitor. (But I've seen some folks do this with their dual monitor setups - almost as a feeble attempt to justify the usefulness of them.)
If you do software development and work with remote desktops via tools like VNC, all at the same time, then sure - you might need all the screen space.
If you're using a dual(or more) monitor workstation, you'll definitely want to check out UltraMon (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/).
It is THE best app for using a multi-monitor configuration, and I am not exaggerating(sp?) at all.
That site also runs a database (http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/db.asp) of Multi-Monitor configurations if anyone is interested in checking their system for compatibility.
However, two separate cards will all but guarantee different colors. I had that setup, and with two equal monitors (samsung 750s) one of the screens was "yellower" than the other. Swapped the monitors, but the colors stayed the same.
After several months several of the other developers also went 17 and 15 inchers. When management talked about moving to 17 inch LCD's not a single developer requested one if it meant getting rid of their dual setup.
Since then I have moved my home setup to linux, I splashed out and got myself two LCD monitors.. I am still finding Xinerama on the challenging side - I can get it working, Mandrake did it alot easier than Redhat, but there are still some issues that persist.
I just can't be bothered.
I do not quite understand why the MS "windowmanager" does not support virtual desktops out of the box. I found that I need about 9 of them to be comfortable. And the KDE-variant will not do, it has to be fvwm-style desktops next to each other, with automatic switchover when the mouse touches the edge of a screen.
Interestingly I had this with my first Unix account (SunOS more than a decade back) and never found anything superior. Now I use basically the same configuration on Linux. A little updated, a little improved, but basically the same configuration file from back then. That's right: Change of OS without change of windowmanager configuration (except for paths) or look-and-feel! I hear that with MS you loose all your settings after an OS upgrade. Not so with X11....
The absence of virtual desktops might also be one of the major reasons I am not comfortable with Windows or MacOS.
Wake up, people! Good UI design is not new! Those that do not have it today are either ignorant or arrogant!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Is anyone else having this problem? My primary display is a 21" Sun monitor (mods: -1 using unix monitor on windows box) with a 15" CRT and a 15" LCD as the secondary and tertiary.. as you might guess, the sun monitor runs at a bit of a higher resoultion (1280x1024 vs 1024x768 on the others).
I keep my task bar over on the left monitor (low res), but whenever I call the start menu up, it's too large to fit comfortably on the small screen- windows is sizing the start menu for my primary monitor, not the one the taskbar is actually located on.
Is this a lesser known bug? Or am I missing some super-secret obscure option to change my start menu so it doesn't extend off the bottom of the screen with no scroll option? (Yes, ha-ha, I should delete some programs, have a +1 funny)
I really think that we need to develop GUIs to get rid of mice. They're great and all, but like many posters have said, the real gain is from not fsck'ing with the mouse constantly. I'd like most apps to be full screen, with a dial or keyboard button to quickly filp between apps [maybe screenshots?] Media players and calculators would be types of exceptions, but with multiple monitors lots of options are available...you can make a computer act "like a book" rather than some "desktop pages" thing.
Why, if you put two monitors side by side, will one of the screens start to flicker?
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
Gee, I'll bet there's a study out there showing that using two hands increases productivity too.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
I've got 3 CRTs (1 19in in the middle plus 2 17in) on 3 video cards in my Linux box and I must say it kicks ass for development, among other things.
I have XMMS and GAIM on my left screen, two xterms on my 19in in the middle, and online docs or two more xterms on the right.
When doing homework I have VMWare running Word (sad I know, but required to exchange docs with school account) on one screen, and then I can pop up Mozilla for some research, or check my mail quickly, on another screen.
It is amazingly useful to be able to have three maximized windows at once, and even more smaller windows (XMMS, GAIM, small xterm, etc.). Two everyone who says they don't "get" multihead: you will get it once you have enough space that you never need to have one window on top of another - everything visible at once. Even better with virtual desktops.
How does this compare to using virtual desktops? I'm a cheapskate, so rather than spend twice as much money for a 10% productivity improvement, can I get an 8% productivity improvement just by having different apps on different screens?
When people ask me about multiple monitors, I use this analogy. Image driving in a car and all you can see is a 20 inch square.
Think of it this way as well. You work on a *desktop*, right? Well, imagine yourself working in an office without computers, using just paper, and you have to work on a physical, wooden desktop only 20 inches square.
One aspect of multiple monitor use that usually does not occur to the uninitiated is that other monitors are handy for "storage". When you work with paper at a wooden desk, do you work with every paper in one pile? No, you spread them out, you have an inbox, you have a paper in front of you, you place one to the side because it's important and you want it visible so you don't forget, you put another piece of paper (or a book) to the other side to refer to.
My experience is that many non-techies look at multiple monitor use as superfluous. They think it's just a toy. At my last job, I was the first one to use multiple monitors (I worked in the surplus property department) and the IT managers thought it was wastefull. But other people saw it and wanted it. Then they found out how useful it is and the trend took off there. The managers still don't get it, though. Why would they? All they ever use is email. For most people though, it's sort of an ah-ha moment when they really try it out. When I first mentioned to my Dad that he ought to use multiple monitors, he dismissed it as a "gee-whiz" kind of thing -- cool if you're a geek, but otherwise not very usefull. Now he has six monitors on one computer.
I use three at home and, just as an example as I write I have open on separate monitors Opera, Bash (x2) and System Monitor, and Evolution. At work I have two monitors on one machine. The second monitor I took off of a second machine under my desk. That second machine is physically headless, but it runs VNC and I have it displayed on my primary machine's second monitor.
Matter of fact, multiple monitors is so important to me that this issue is what held me up from going totally Linux on my primary machine at home. Once I had that -- bye, bye Windows.
As far as coding, I don't see how you can even do it without multiple monitors (I feel this way in hindsight, of course). Having used VB at work (yuck), it was indispensible to have code on the main monitor, the GUI on another, and debugging, project explorer, help, etc. on the third.
If you haven't used multiple monitors, do yourself a favor and try it. It's like taking the blinders off.
should've been "obvious"... oh wait.
There is a third party utility for OS X that will give you virtual desktops. It's called CodeTek VirtualDesktop and is pretty good. It lets me have autofocus and autoraise as well. The full version costs $30 but the unregistered version is just enough to make things workable. You only get two virtual desktops if you don't register.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I have 8 NEC 1850e's stacked two high 4 across working 5 machines for my 'workstation' :-D
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
NEC sells monitors. ATI sells graphic cards. Of which you need one of per monitor. NEC and ATI executives get together to play golf. One says "Let's start a campaign to sell more!". "Ok! says the other one but how?". "Well let's pretend monitors help fight terrorism". "That won't work. How about they're good for the children?". "No one cares. How about they're good for the economy?". "Yeah, that might fly!" And so they bribe somebody to write a paper stating that using multiple monitors (and graphics cards): - increases productivity - thus boosts the economy - thus reduces unemployment - thus reduces crime C'mon, let's be real guys, look who paid for it, this is not an independant study. There's no way it would have drawned any other conclusion, it's all fake.
...because they are arranged with two monitors on my Linux workstation and one of my WinXP machine (for when you just can't escape M$).
How is this relevent, you ask?
Because an incredibly cute little program called Synergy lets me warp the mouse pointer back and forth between linux and Windows, so the Windows monitor effectively just becomes a third screen in my setup. You can't drag windows to it, of course, but you can cut & paste between the OSs. It's excellent. No more dual booting for me!
You win again, gravity!
A survey of hardcore gamers revealed that actually decreasing the number of monitors from 1 to 0 actually increased productivity by an order of magnitude or more.
I have a 15" and a 17" on my desk at work. The 15" contestantly has a webbrowser opened on it. That's adding productivity... working and reading /. at the same time.
And I run 'em at 16x12 res.
You can believe it helps my productivity as a tech writer. FrameMaker on part of one screen, a couple open emails on the other, a search browser somewhere in the middle, Acrobat somewhere else, and an IM or two near the bottom--
Oh damn! Right, it's also easier to be non-productive with so much real-estate clamoring for attention. *grins*
-Technowitch
that's perfect. got my first twinhead setup and the biggest annoyance is that the windows on the taskbar don't correspond to the monitor they window itself is displayed on. the nvidea utilities attempt to do stuff like snap to monitor x, but don't seem to work too well. thanks for the link.
I used to run triple monitors on my main machine (dual 19", 17") and I got used to it over a long period of time. I finally made the switch to Linux/FreeBSD on my boxes a few months ago, and after getting used to multiple desktops, I started liking that a lot better than multiple monitors. Sometimes I had more than enough programs to fill up all three monitors, and then I had to switch back and forth between programs. Sometimes I had too few programs open and I had a monitor or two just displaying a background. Using multiple desktops, I can make sure that I've got more than enough setups for my needs (I have 6 set up, but I can add more easily). Using tabbed terminals(Gnome Terminal)/browsers (Mozilla/Galeon)/IM(GAIM)/editors (gedit/vim in terminal)/whatever makes me far more productive than multiple monitors.
...what happens if you go to LAN parties frequently? Hauling my 19", sound system, peripherals, computer, not to mention all the cables; Is a pain in the ass.
Besides, my desk is full anyway- I wouldn't be able to fit 2 damn monitors on my desk, let alone 2 CRT's (infamous for being 'chunky')...
My PC has a MDA GreenScreen and a ADM3A dumb terminal on a serial port as well as my main graphics screen. I find them to be quite useful. Alas, I am ging to have to drop the MDA when I upgrade - all MDA cards are ISA and newer PCs are PCI. :(