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A Dual Monitor Experiment
backBeat writes "This is a descriptive article about one man and his dual monitor odyssey. After reading the snippet I had to read the article: "The productivity increase lasted for about two days. At this point I realized that I could to work on one monitor and watch a full screen DVD on the other. This was pretty cool until I realized how counterproductive it could be. Luckily I am quite adept at concentrating on my writing, while typing, while watching a movie." The Dual Monitor Experiment did not disappoint."
There was a good article about dual-monitor setups on Extremetech recently.
I am a teacher and the computer I have at school (running WinXP Pro) has three video cards in it and I love it. The main monitor (a 22") always has my current project displayed and the other two monitors (17", one on each side) have email, MSN Messenger and a news web window always up. It was distracting at first but I found that it eventually gave me freedom to complete tasks without constantly switching between windows. It's especially nice when I am working on lecture notes and I am reading a web-based source at the same time.
Dual monitor setup, cool!
Enter the Macintosh II, introduced in 1987, it was capable of driving up to 6 monitors at a time.
I don't know how this is news, but I'm not aobut bashing. Anyway, with Nvidias drivers, you can have two monitors running and have another desktop as well - resulting in virtually four monitors. All I do is rotate the mouse clcckwise and the second desktop pops up (though it could be argued that it is similar to Alt-Tab). I'm sure ATI has something similar as well.
I find at certain tasks I am FAR more productive with dual monitors.
When I have a lot of data manipulation to do it is very advantageous to have one document open on each monitor. Copying and pasting is simple, and doesn't involve switching between programs. They are both open and visible at once, just copy from one and paste to the other.
I do think that sacrificing an increase in productivity (the personal tendency to watch a DVD on the other monitor aside) to save $1 a month is very short sighted.
With LCD's (very low power consumption) that is far less of an issue.
Several studies have shown at least a double digit increase in real world productivity. My own experience would suppport that.
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And if you do a WHOIS on the domain, you'll see his name as the registrant as well.
I have two 20" flat screens at work and couldn't live without them. As a code monkey I find the extra screen area invaluable for both coding and testing. I can have a number of terminals displaying the source I'm working on, a terminal to run tests and a web browser displaying documentation; all visible at once. This is huge productivity boost and avoids the need to constantly hunt for which window contains the information I'm after. It's also a lot cheaper and easier than having two computers with a monitor each.
Yeah, and now that you pointed it out, I found out he's pulled this crap before:
0 7&tid=201&tid=133&tid=190&tid=1
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/29/19462
Here's a good site about multi-monitor setups.
Dual screens are very useful for 3D CAD work (ortho views on one screen for precise placement of objects, skewed view on the other for 3D view[1]) and for webpage work (HTML on one screen, preview in the other).
Enabling x-mouse (I.E., focus follows cursor) is probably a good idea.
[1] Some people like to put onscreen menus and buttons on one screen and the image on the other, but that seems like a lot of extra mouse movement compared to using keyboard shortcuts for commands.
If you are running Linux (or any version of UNIX) you should look into DMX (distributed multiheaded X). You can use your old laptop as a screen attached to a newer laptop and/or a desktop (there doesn't seem to be a hard limit to the number of machines that can be linked).
He outta know better... After all, Wired Magazine wrote a freaking ARTICLE two weeks ago about how his site got slashdotted on a prior stunt. Sounds fishy to me.
, 00.html?tw=wn_story_top5
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65165
A *leedle* earlier than that.
A two monitor setup was pretty common for the original IBM PC starting around 1981. The CGA and MDA (or Hercules) cards would address different memory. Many apps would use the MDA for one view and the CGA for the other. Spreadsheet on MDA, graph on CGA for many spreadsheets (remember, spreadsheets were the "killer app" of the era). Borland's IDEs used MDA for source, CGA for output.
You can go back before that (I've seen S-100 bus systems with multiple monitors, and I think the Z80 plugin card to run CP/M on the Apple ][ allowed a second monitor), but dual monitor usage was fairly common long before Win98.
--
Evan "using 4 monitors in xinerama, 6 if you count X exports onto the laptops"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Users of dual monitors and Windows would be well served to check out this handy little application: http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/
I find it not only a pleasanter way of dealing with multiple monitors (over the default vid card or windows handlers) but it has some productivity enhancements that make me more productive and make it easier to relate to the switch.
from their website:
How about both?
I have a dual-monitor setup, with multi-desktop ability. I hate the thought of having to go back to working on a single monitor - fortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
It's especially useful when I'm doing a remote desktop into another machine - one monitor shows my machine, the other the remote machine. I have a switchview that will let me select between the machines, but I rarely use it because it is just more useful to have them both accessible at the same time.
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From the Wired article mentioned in jmulvey's post
Maybe it would be a problem the first time Slashdot posts a story, but by the time the dupe rolls around...
Dual monitors can be very beneficial to productivity, but from a health and safety point of view they can be a nightmare.
What didn't come up in the article, as LCDs were used, is that if you don't have both screens running exactly the same refresh rate then it can cause appalling eye strain. Trying to focus on screens running different refreshes becomes very difficult and within 20 minutes or so the eyestrain gets very noticeable
I used a dual monitor setup for a week before giving up after developing a very annoying twitch in my left eye. My right eye was fine looking at a 17" screen running at 1280x1024@85hz but the left was trying to focus on a crappier 17" at 75hz.
The lesson being that if you can't afford to go the LCD route then choose your second monitor carefully, as you will want it to match the primary as closely as possible.
Multi-desktops don't do a thing for me. What is the use of a graphical application running in a window I can't see? Multi-desktops with a useable preview window might be worthwhile, but the way it's done in KDE/Gnome right now is worthless.
For people that basically have every application always maximized, multiple desktops really don't do anything useful. It's most useful if you have several windows open at once. Say one desktop has IM - the client and several conversations. The next has several file system windows open so you can drag and drop files with ease. The next desktop might have several system monitoring tools open. So for instance, you can bring up all your monitoring windows with one click, instead of several clicks to bring up each individual window to the foreground. It's handy. But hardly nessecary.