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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.
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.
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'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
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 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
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
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
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
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?
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.