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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."
Dual monitors isn't news for anyone. It's been easy to do for years and years. Hell, Win98 did it just as easily as the current Windows versions. I remember the difficulties I ran into when I was trying to do it with two different sized monitors with X and no GUIs. I wish there had been a single repository of easy to interpret information back then.
Yeah, two monitors COULD be more beneficial if you're looking to be productive. This guy mentions that but then switches to say that he enjoys multi-tasking and watching a movie at the same time as he is working. Personally, that's not exactly "productive" and honestly it's likely not something that's permitted outside of your home. The only time I am TRULY looking to be productive is when I'm at work and Slashdot has cornered the market on hoarding my time while I'm there.
He talks a little bit about the cost of having a dual monitor setup. Yeah, CRTs are cheap and LCDs are costing less and less but I'm mostly concerned with the amount of electricity that two monitors use up when they are both fired up and running constantly. I ran a 17" and a 15" CRT on my desktop for several years but recently I have switched back to just running one. Why? Even if it saves me $1 on my electric bill (it actually saves a bit more than that) it's beneficial. That's a beer, a burger, or $1 to go towards something else that's more important than being able to have Word open on one monitor and AIM on another.
Personally, I'm going to stick to running a single CRT for now and have to waste all that time hitting ALT+TAB to get to my AIM window when it starts flashing. So much for being able to watch a movie and do my work while being productive at the same time.
There was a good article about dual-monitor setups on Extremetech recently.
Honestly, is this really that special? I've been using dual monitors for a while and KNOW I'm not the first nor anywhere close to it. Yeah, its nice if you can afford to have two monitors (and the hardware to support it).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Is that you soon realize that going back to one monitor is impossible.
Second, and more importantly, I really detest people who post their own stories as if they were a third party. Look at the story above, and note that backBeat lists his email as salcan@gmail.com. Then go to the article and you'll see that it is written by one Sal Cangeloso. He claims that "after reading the snippet, I had to read the article", which is strange, since he wrote it in the first place. If you wrote something interesting, take credit for it. Say, "I recently did some experimenting with a dual monitor setup, and I wrote up some of my conclusions." But don't try to pass it off as anything except self-promotion, as if all of us are idiots who won't catch on.
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.
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I work as a ISC in the miltary, or as an IT in the civian sector, I started using duel montiors when I noticed we where using laptops with a docking station, with a hook up montior, it wasn't long before thinking about it I found a way for it to be done, after being able to look at HTML and cheack my e-mail, and surf the web it wasn't long before I wanted to try it in home, The only downfall i encourted was for games the video card had a hard time strugling to keep up both displays and often caused lower fps for most games, with that being said it definally does increase your productive rate, but if you play games alot its not really worth the extra money.
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Dual head is really helpful for productivity for certain jobs. The most obvious and common job is the kind where you have to work on one document, while referring to other documents or webpages. I found that being able to keep my own document open while reading stuff on the other screen, really helps me to keep my flow of thought. Even a small extra screen provides much more useful desktop real estate than a single, high resolution monitor: I have a 1200x1024 17" main screen and a smaller 1024x768 15" one... both LCDs. I found this to be such an improvement over a single 21" 2048xwhatever tube, that I now got dual head at work as well.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Q: What's worse than linking to your site in a Slashdot article?
A: Linking to your site twice in a Slashdot article.
Were they scared it wouldn't go down fast enough?
Dual monitor setup, cool!
Enter the Macintosh II, introduced in 1987, it was capable of driving up to 6 monitors at a time.
Fanboy mode: ON
/etc newsfeed, the flash for some seconds as the updates come in. You can only look at one screen at the time, but your eyes notice the flashing to make youu aware of the news coming in. Red flash = important! look at me NOW!, Green flash = Just some 'ol news coming in, Yellow flash = Just a lead (followup).
Windows: Letting users discover the niftyness of Mac, a decade later
Fanboy mode: OFF
Seriously, this guy don't get it. Having to screens filled with two full space windows is very, very inefficient. Having switched to Mac recently, I find the mentality of MDI-ness a bit strange, as I'm used to the fullscreen windows on Windows. But on my Powerbook, during a lecture I can actually juggle Powerpoint to see the professor's notes, Word to type my notes and iChat all on my laptop screen at one time. It is not a matter of size. Sex is, but not screens.
At work I use Windows with dual monitor, but nowhere near as inefficient as he does. The setup (a newsdesk) has one screen constanly reloading a Reuters / AP / APTN
i was a system engineer for a very large military contractor/airplane maker - and i insist on at least two monitors, even if that means buying the parts myself... which i had to.
in any case - when doing documentation review, action item lists, and various document comparison tasks - the bulk of systems engineering for a big contractor - having two monitors should be a requirement. otherwise, one needs to keep switching between two documents, and you can never actually look at both at the same time.. so missing things is quite easy.
most people in my office would print documents so that they could work on the other document that they were doing the comparison work to...
before i left - 4 people had badgered the IT geeks to give them dual monitor setups, and from what i hear, its up to 7 now - because for the MS Office drones, dual monitors is the greatest thing on the planet.
The worst part is that the IT geeks - who could also have benefited from dual monitors by setting up status screens 100% of the time on one monitor, and their daily tasks like email on the other - would bitch like John Stweart on Crossfire about how it was a waste and an over the top luxury...
but they never concidered how much time and paper it saved me... and if everyone had one, how the paper would go down tremendously.
oh well, most major corp IT drones are asshole MSCE singles with bad skin and worse interpersonal skillz anyhow.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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've been using two monitors for about for years now, and I don't thik I could ever go back! The swing arm thing in the article seems cool, but I must say that I love my Ikea Desk! Was around $200 and the moitors can swing--I'm a student and my bed is beside my desk, so I can swing my monitor to face my bed to watch tv and movies!
The two monitors come in very handy when programing, writing reports, or surfing the web while IM'ing. Just did a networking assignment last night, and I could have several consoles open on the 2nd monitor to test clients/server while coding on the other monitor.
If you haven't tried 2 monitors, do it now! No excuses, 's cheap--if you don't have a vid card that can do 2 monitors, get a 2nd cheap pci card for like $20 and throw another monitor on.. do it!
Boxing Equipment Reviews
Luckily I could go read the article and reply to your post at the same time easily since I have a dual monitor setup! Seriously though, I would rather have a multi-desktop window manager than two big monitors taking up my whole desk any day of the week, at least until I can afford a gigantomondo plasma TV that I can hang on the wall instead.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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.
He talks a little bit about the cost of having a dual monitor setup. Yeah, CRTs are cheap and LCDs are costing less and less but I'm mostly concerned with the amount of electricity that two monitors use up when they are both fired up and running constantly.
If you do video, image, or web editing, it can be very useful to have a second monitor (for option pallettes or previewing, or browsing documentation on the second screen). If you're worried about power consumption, why not just turn off the supplementary monitor when you're not using it?
I'm personally a fan of dual-heading. I use a POS 15" monitor along with my (somewhat less POS) 17" at home, which usually just has Moz eternally open in it to preview the page I'm working on, or to look stuff up.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I find myself quite *IN GOES THE RED PILL* capableo f concentrating on *HA, HE THINKS THAT'S AIR HE'S BREATHING, LOL!! OMG!! THIS IS THE BEST PART* reading, thinking, *MAN, TRINITY IS TEH ROXXORZZZ* typing and watching a movie *THERE IS NO SPOON LOL!* at the same time.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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.
A tv attached to your computer also works well for this sort of thing.
A TV attached to a DVD player (and not a computer) also works surprisingly well for this sort of thing. I think some of you should give it a try sometime...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
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:
I've never seen such a blatant self-promoting assclown in my entire Slashdot life. Is there some sort of e-mail blacklist to filter out these kind of "article" submissions?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
interesting concept.... slashdotting a gmail account.... wonder if even a 1GB gmail account could stand up to a paragraph or two from every slashdot reader........
I reject your reality
All recently made (or not so recently) laptops with ATI or NVidia display adapters should be able to do it. Even my puny Toshiba w/ Radeon 7000 video that cost me $1200 CAD new can handle dual-head. At work I use a Thinkpad with a 9000 dual head as well.
A lot of my work involves TeX, where it is just convenient to have Emacs on one screen and the DVI output on another. I've done extensive image cataloguing and indexing, too, where you can have the image full-screen and your database next to it. This is just so convenient that I have trouble doing without it. When I bought a laptop, I always took care to pick one where the graphics chipset supported driving two monitors simultaneously.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
It would seem that this person has a history of using Slashdot as a vehicle to increase traffic to his website, presumably to generate ad revenue.
IMHO this is abuse of Slashdot's popularity, and thus his accounts (and any new ones created with his e-mail address) should be pulled.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have 2 IBM P260 21" CRTs on my desk. I just happen to be messing with a plug-in electricity meter and discovered that each monitor requires .83 Amps, 99 VA, 98 W.
/mo * 98 W * (1 kW / 1000 W) * (7 cents / kWh) = $1.19 / mo
Assuming a 173.33 hours per month (2080 hours per year / 12 month per year), thats:
173.33 hrs
If, in that month, I can get 40 seconds more work done due to the second monitor, the electricity will be paid for.
- Tony
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.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
As a lazy programmer I find I'm much more productive when I have other people do my work for me. This allows me to get ahead in my projects without the necessary work that would normally be required. I have plenty of time to read slashdot as a result and my productivity hasn't been compromised at all!
Seriously though, I would rather have a multi-desktop window manager than two big monitors taking up my whole desk any day of the week, at least until I can afford a gigantomondo plasma TV that I can hang on the wall instead.
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.
Multiple monitors...that's a different story. Put your IDE in one monitor and your web browser (for documentation) on the other. Leave Kontact running in one monitor while you're screwing around on Slashdot in the other. GTK-Gnutella or Pan in one monitor while you're watching a movie on the second. Once you've been using a multi-monitor desktop for a while, you'll find it annoying to work on a system with a single monitor.
Maybe the guy is schizophrenic! Think about it: two personalities, one writes the article, then the other one finds it open on the desktop... makes sense, in a schizo-kind of way. But in any case, he needs to get off /. and search help from a psychiatrist, whether he is schizophrenic or not, because he's abusing of our time, and I don't like wasting mine. In fact, I can't read the article because it times out.
But guess what? I did that before he did. Except I thought /. had more interesting things to post than that kinda stupid stuff. Are the moderators of the story half-groggy? I thought they had a little more judgement than that... Guess I was wrong.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
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...
There was a point at which I had four monitors. When I was doing something useful, the first monitor was work, second was documentation, third was communication (email, IM clients, etc) and the fourth had system monitors. I probably have several forms of cancer now, since three of them were old CRTs that I bummed from friends. During that time, I very rarely used Alt-Tab, and only sometimes had overlapping windows. It was nice. I usually think of it like this: One monitor is like having a school desk, two is like a nice office desk or workbench. I just went with an entire conference room. Excessive? Yes. Geeky? Without a doubt.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
You need wallpaper set up before you can be productive? Just to be clear, you're talking about the background graphic that gets covered over by your application windows, especially the maximized ones, all the time?
And then what's the productive part but setting up the screensaver!? That program that wastes processor cycles and only runs when you're not even there? And somehow setting up the wallpaper first was necessary for this?
I think I can quantify your productivity increase. You've saved the time that it takes to switch between working and goofing off. Before you could only do one or the other; now you can do both at the same time!
You know, you can get that same effect by putting a picture on your desk, and it doesn't draw as much power. Really, your most productive use of your second screen is to display a static image?
I find it difficult to believe you even work in an office environment, and if indeed you work from home, I should let you know that they have these glass-covered portals in walls that offer a view of the outside world. Coincidentally, they are also called "windows". Try moving your computer closer to one.
And I still come away with nothing about what your work is, other than it involves word processors and possibly spreadsheets. If it is writing articles for the web, you could have at least touched on having your research materials on one screen and composing your articles on another. If you were a coder, you could be viewing the application on one screen and tracing code execution in a debugger on another.
Sorry, but your article is useless. It's nothing but talking about your new toy and you really offer no work benefits to the configuration other than it makes your goofing off more efficient.
There are those of us who are trying to get dual monitors in our workplace. If management goes by articles like yours, they'll only see them as tools for more goofing off in the workplace and refuse the requests.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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.
You may be interested then in multi-head displays from PanoramTech. We tried their 3 headed displays for a demo environment and it was well received by analyst who typically leave their main application up on one, a web search on the second, and email, reporting tools,and other apps on the last screen. While not practical for all users, multiple screens have their use.
Hells bells, let's just give them the ability to edit the stories too, that way the editors wouldn't really have to do anything at all.
Seriously, I know the editors here get crap all the time for the grammar/spelling/duplicate stories, but isn't that what they are supposed to be doing? Don't they even read Slashdot themselves? I mean, this is a blatant example of a known abuser of the system, and the article was posted by Hemos himself. WTF? I don't WANT to wear a tinfoil hat, but I almost feel like I can't avoid it much longer.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.