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Do Big Screens Make Employees More Productive?
prostoalex writes "If your company uses 17" or 19" monitors, 30" monitors will make the employees more productive, Apple-sponsored research says. MacWorld reports: "Pfeiffer's testing showed time savings of 13.63 seconds when moving files between folders using the larger screen — 15.7 seconds compared to 29.3 seconds on the 17-in. monitor — for a productivity gain of 46.45 percent. The testing showed a 65.09 percent productivity gain when dragging and dropping between images — a task that took 6.4 seconds on the larger monitor compared to 18.3 seconds using the smaller screen. And cutting and pasting cells from Excel spreadsheets resulted in a 51.31 percent productivity gain — a task that took 20.7 seconds on the larger monitor versus 42.6 seconds on the smaller screen."" Calling such task-specific speed jolts "productivity gains" seems optimistic unless some measure of overall producivity backs up that claim, but don't mention that on the purchase order request.
"Do Big Screens Make Employees More Productive?"
yes.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
30" screens will also make Apple a lot more money. Funny how that works out.
Double the size makes quadruple the cost when it comes to LCD's.
I certainly feel more productive on dual screens vs. a single display.
LCDs are also more productive than CRTs, because they free up more desk space for heaping junk, err... I meant, organizing my work.
It seems to me the problem could be just as well solved with a higher resolution on the current monitor. I don't really trust the research, since Apple, you know, makes behemoths of display technology.
The time I need to type mv file /some/new/destination/ may depend on the size of the keyboard, but surely not on the size of the screen.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...what you all think regarding whether it's truly a jump in productivity or not.
*copies link, sends to boss.*
Don't know about everyone else, but I quite like having a totally separate debugger/help screen.
Sure, I'll agree that big screens can make one more productive. In fact I'd rather have two big monitors than one attached to my machine. More real estate is a good thing.
But the given example, of dragging and dropping files, has got to be the stupidest thing I've read today, and I'm already at work.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Instead of spending thousands of $ upgrading, why not just ban the internet in the workspace. Easy (and cheap) way to increase productivity!
Apple should refer to Amdahl's Law to see that a 50% speedup of something that only accounts for 1% of your overall time really ain't that big of a deal!
One of my clients, involved in cartography (making maps), showed me his brand new 30" screen and said he had upgraded from 20" because on one single project, he was losing about 25% of his time scrolling around. So I'd have to say it not only made him more productive, but it also eventually paid for itself.
Give me a user interface like that ship on Andromeda and watch me get productive.
An AI that speaks English, a robot with a personality, a plug-in-your-brain interface, put 'em all together and let's get to work!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How about dual screen monitors? At my work we all have dual 17" monitors, which is a cheaper option than a single 30" and provides greater efficiency if you want to run one app in full screen. I guess they wouldn't make Apple as much money though.
This is the same as having two monitors. My productivity drops drastically when using one monitor. I normally have code on one screen and flip between reference material and viewing the program on the other screen. I don't have to memorize anything because it is always visible. So, I've trained myself out of remembering phrases or numbers for that few seconds it takes to flip screens and type. Instead, I have to copy/paste when using one screen - which takes more time than glancing at one screen and typing in the other.
I wonder if multiple desktops helps also. I have a production desktop for my work, a communication desktop with email/IM, and a fun desktop with my music player and such. I can jump between them without moving a lot of windows around. Will that concept be adopted by more than the Gnome/KDE models?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I spit on this male-sponsored study. Size doesn't matter...it's what you do with it that counts.
Apple-sponsored research says
Exactly. If I were Apple I would want to sell more large screens too!
...is the little known fact that having dual 30" widescreen LCDs with 2ms response time to accompany my Aeron would make me far more productive.
I ran one monitor at work for a long time (17" - the head IT guy keeps rejecting my request for a 19"). They won't let me put a second video card in my computer, so I threw up a linux box and use X2VNC between them and now I have twice the usable space and I am much more productive, especially when coding or doing trouble tickets. I spend way less time alt-tabbing around looking for my terminal sessions - they're all on one monitor, as well as my browser, etc, leaving my 'work' tools on the other so I can move between easily.
The downsides I see are a) cost and b) people getting a 30" monitor, complaining they can't see anything, and running 800x600. I think that would break my heart and mind a little, but it wouldn't suprise me. People around here still run 800x600 on their 17" monitors, and complain that 1280x1024 is too small.
But, now that I think about it, having a 30" monitor wouldn't necessarily help - when you maximize a window, it fills the whole screen, which still puts you back to alt-tabbing. Maybe a better window manager/gui that you could break the screen in to regions, so that when you maximize a window, it would only fill the top 40% or something. Or the ability to pin windows to a location, os you don't have to maximize them.
I think my point is that more screen real-estate, be it one huge monitor, or 2 (or 3 as I sometimes setup) is very much more useful.
God, I babble a lot.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
I imagine most Apple Employees are more productive on 17" screens than on smaller ones.
Funny though, my word processor is slower today than it was then.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I work for a large defense contractor. We have some very, VERY smart people working for us. In recent years, we've been slowly upgrading to large (22") Dell flat panels. To date, I've yet to see ONE engineer running the panel at its native resolution. 1024x768 seems to be almost standard. Why? I'll never know. Maybe their eyes are just bad (many are very old).
would make sneakily watching porn a lot more worthwhile.
Summation 2
A GUI is not a suitable environment for everything guys - I've seen so many people stuff about clicking everywhere and sorting by extension when they could just use a very simple command to move things in up to one tenth of the time. Computers are there to do the heavy lifting for us if we just tell them the rules. There are a lot of good uses for big screens and multiple screens - but a glass typewriter version of a filing cabinet is given as the example?
What's more productive than a 30 inch screen? Two 20 inch screens that combined, cost half as much.
More screen real-estate will improve certain types of workers - I have dual 17" flat panels at work, and that helps a great deal in coding - I can have a header up in a window on one screen, and the code using that header on another, or a document of a protocol up on one and the state machine for that protocol up on another, and so on.
While I could just as easily do the same sort of thing with a single 30" screen, for the cost, having 2 cheap 17" panels makes a LOT more sense.
So while I do question the exact methodology Apple used (cp -r source_dir dest_dir works a whole lot faster and is pretty much screen-size independent), and I do question the idea that the best way to achieve the benefit is a single, very expensive screen, I don't dispute the basic conclusion - more screen area will increase productivity of many classes of employee.
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Another help which is not offered by Windows or even Mac, Virtual Screens which are prevalent in Linux such as on KDE or FVWM. One virtual screen runs web browser, another one has an edit window for programming and another for compiling and debugging for example.
Because I try to limit terminal widths for vim to a reasonable amount, just having the widescreen aspect helps a ton. It allows me to have multiple sessions open side-by-side, with the windows stretched to fill the entire height. 30" would seem I could tile them veritically as well as horizontally.
In Windows the behavior of a large desktop is easier for most users on 2 smaller monitors. When we moved into our new building all of the IT department got two monitors, something that has been a huge boon to us developers. Well, just recently the network guys got cleared to put dual monitors on the accounting department's machines, and select employees through out the corporate office. People who are running multiple systems side by side. For instance, we have collectors that have a leasing system open, a reporting system open, and a customer on the phone. For them, the saving of 10 seconds wait while talking with the customer is a huge improvement in quality of service.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I use two monitors.
The 12" on my tablet and a 17" Dell LCD.
I put mail and an MMC on the 12" with browsers and text editors on the 17".
I'm not sure it makes me more productive but at least I know where things are.
This
Anybody that takes 29.3 to do a file-copy operation needs treatment for their Parkinson's disease, NOT a bigger monitor.
Last time I checked, LCD displays didn't have an electron gun like CRT displays.
I dare any of you to go out, armed with this article, and expense a pair of massive huge-screen monitors.
...If it works, send me the extra.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Higher DPI on a given size monitor just makes the pixels smaller, meaning that each character's glyph contains more pixels. This makes the text sharper, but it doesn't increase the amount of useful work area unless the user has visual acuity significantly above the median.
You can take any small measurement, perform an analysis to make it faster, and then claim a HUGE Savings for the action.
Yes, two screens make me more productive. Three screens make me even more productive- I can have corporate email, CNN, Javadocs, compiler, and editor screens open all at the same time. I save quite a bit of time. At the end of the day... how are you going to measure that exactly?
Improvement processes (such as 5S) are being implemented as we speak. My job was to 5S the coffee room. Accordingly I can now make coffee (which I don't, because I don't drink it) approximately 15 percent faster. Net savings to the company per year? 0. Coffee breaks are unpaid. But they paid an engineer to clean and tape off the floor for 9 hours...
I'm still trying to think of the most complicated spreadsheet I ever use (data sheets for site visits and inventories) and I still can't think of a single task that took me 20 seconds to paste back and forth. That's rather pathetic...
24 x 80 chars should be enough. Seriously. It's 2006 and I do a lot of work on xterms. OK, somtimes I resise them a bit but I develop as if I still had 24 x 80. Trust me, code and documents look better using k+r style. Even in Java.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Great. I've been spending all day moving files from folder to folder and now with one of these new fangled monitors I can be done just after lunch.
Let's say you earn an annual salary of $50,000 (not factoring in insurance and other benefits) and a 30" monitor costs $1500 (for the Dell). To make back the $1500 the monitor costs, you must be 3% more efficient. 3% of a total 8 hour work day is about 15 minutes. So, will this monitor save you 15 minutes a day? If the answer is yes, then it is a good purchase. If not, will a 24" monitor save you 8 minutes a day? It's a good fallback.
If it really makes you more productive, I don't know. I know I feel more happy in working on large screens.... And when you are happy you do more work. So in that case yes.
And to be honest, if you are doing code it is better to have a large screen so you just can have more information on your screen.... And you do not have to scroll so much. So yes I think it can be a gain in productivity.
Regards, Johan Louwers.
Why are they talking about saving time dragging files around? I have an even faster method - its called the "Command Line"
Great, that means with a 50% gain in productivity I can get my work done in 7.5 minutes v. 15 and after a few days of that I will be right back to 15 minutes time for the task.
I have a 22" monitor and it took me 17.5% less time to realize this was a bullshit artilcle article than it would have on my old 19".
In my current day job, in order to work I have: Two desktop PCs with one 17" screen on each,One sits on the coporate network and the other on the Internet. Working on one screen on both these computers ( as they are not allowed to be networked ) is totally impractical, I cant copy and paste between them so a fair bit of copy typing goes on. If I had one screen for everything, the only advantage I can see would be that my field of vision would be filled by a 30" screen, this would be less distracting. The main benifit I can detect is for the Screen manufacturers, you have one working screen and they sell you another bigger one, that costs a lot more.. perhaps with a bigger profit margin http://www.proview.net/News/News_Details.aspx?ii=2 539
First, I find 2 or even 3 17-19 inch screens are better than one big one.
In terms of productivity there is a noticeable difference when I work in our lab with one monitor versus at my desk with 2. Especially when debugging code.
For me, however, the savings is more in paper than anything. I used to print requirements, interface documents, reference material, etc. Now with 2 monitors I can maximize the document I need on 1 screen then do the design/code stuff on the other. I have substantially reduced my paper consumption as well as other office supplies like highliters, pens, etc.
LCD's cause cancer? Holy hell!
;-)
Seriously, this is 2006. CRTs are about finished.
...on the work your doing, and if it can be partitioned into multiple spaces efficiently. CAD work, it turned out for me, wasn't any more efficient on two screens, but was more efficient on a large widescreen. Since the tools take up a small portion of the screen, a second monitor was mostly unused (unless you count a calendar and email program constantly viewable as useful). A single, large monitor means more drawing data available / more detail shown on the screen, and reduces zooming and panning for operations. If I could drive a 30" from my laptop, I might buy one. I use a 24" WS 'cause it matches my current laptop resolution (seamless transition from work to road use), and it wasn't insanely expensive (30"ers were over $2.5k when I got the 24).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What resolution do these things display?
If I'm used to 1400x1050 on my 15" laptop display, should I expect 2800x2100 on a 30" display? I don't see where the the productivity boost would be if they simply displayed 1024x768 in larger pixels.
Also, wouldn't you have to bump up the sensitivity of your mouse so you didn't have to clear off the rest of your desk to be able to reach the corners of the screen?
I have spent four-five hours trying to get 2 screens hooked up to my linux system. So far no luck. So I figure I'll spend at least 2 more hours.
I have the 2 screens but so far I haven't been any more productive.
The screen with "Check Signal Cable" bouncing around, isn't really doing me any good right now.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
True, they also did 12/13/14/15/16/17/18... ;D
AFAIK, if you're using Xinerama, both screens act as a single one, so virtual desktops are expanding to the 2nd screen.
If not using Xinerama, Both screens act independantly, and you therefore get twice as much virtual desktops. The drawback being, you can't move one window from one screen to the 2nd (some gnome apps like gimp can, though, but not by dragging windows)
These additional independant virtual desktops are the reason why I'm not using Xinerama with my home Window Maker setup.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
We design semiconductor chips at work. It'd be great to have enough room for a shell window or 5, the main CAD window, the design browser window, the verification window, the layer colors window, etc. rather than having to constantly cycle through a huge stack of them. Sure, we've got different virtual screens, but you still have to cycle through them too.
:/
Unfortunately, as our large CRTs age and die, they've more recently been replaced with LCD screens, nice, but they're smaller than the old CRTs...
I think dual monitors makes me more productive at work. For instance now I am posting on /. checking my personal e-mail and chatting on IM all at the same time... talke about workplace efficiency!
True, to a point. I've got pretty good eyesight, but at a comfortable viewing distance (15-20"), 90-100dpi seems about optimal. My laptop is 150dpi, and even at 12-14" viewing distance is tiresome. Switching from a 15.4" WUXGA screen to a 24" WUXGA screen made a noticable difference in my end-of-day productivity, with no change in pixels, as it was a function of how tired my eyes got.
LCDs, of course, don't really have a variable display resultion - they have one optimal resolution, and anything else looks lousy. When I used CRTs, I would run a 20" at 1600x1200. Many (older) coworkers didn't like to work at my station because they had problems resolving the text in dialogs and on buttons (they ran 1280x1024 mostly). I preferred it because it got most the toolbars and such "out of the way" and left more "space" for my work area (cad/analysis).
Going from UXGA to WUXGA (an extra 320x1200 pixels on the side) helped a lot, as I could drop all my toolbars/pallets on one side, leaving a large 4:3 space to do my drafting. Now, I might have saved 1 to 2 minutes a day in fewer pan/zoom actions, but it adds up over time.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Engineers who use dual-monitors are much less productive than those who use a single large monitor although I think it has more to do with the dual-monitor users having less experience. The senior-level developers almost universally prefer a single large monitor.
I don't know if I work *that* much faster now that I have two LCD screens, but it does feel a lot better, and makes work more fun and easier to handle.
;)
Which is what you want for your employees.
And, if you're truly interested in finding good people instead of the-usual-joe-average, a multiple/large screen is one of the points you can use as bait
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Try hiding a sausage that size from the boss!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
However whenever I'm looking at an excel file, more than 1 monitors never has helped me when the data was all on one sheet. Higlighting areas of cells and dragging and dropping in an excel context is more useful than dragging and dropping in a file management context.
Sadly, where I work the people actually using excel on a regular basis have all gone and requested tiny laptops that are far too small to be useful, its some craze amoungst our business analysts that want to be able to take their work home every day. They should try getting their work done at work instead of taking it home. Which brings up another point...
Touchpad or mouse. Standard mouse or mouse with programable buttons. I say mouse > touchpad but which would improve efficiency more, a mouse with more buttons, or a bigger screen? I'm partial to the mouse with more buttons myself.
I agree, but I sure would like a 30" monitor to accompany my 17" widescreen laptop... time to slip this study into the company mailing list heh heh.
A month or so ago there was a similar article, making a qualitative comparison between a bigger screen versus a faster processor. This reinforces the idea that, really, processors and memory and other nuts-and-bolts features of computers have pretty much been "good enough" for a while, and high-value improvements will come from elsewhere.
Link.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
I can definitely account for the productivity difference when you consider the interaction of pixel size with the accuracy of where the mouse pointer's hot spot lands on an object. Back in the days of REAL computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST, many of us would use the lower resolutions on our desktops. 320x200 and 640x400 (don't know why it wasn't 480) were pretty normal. And, of course at that resolution you could see the pixels even on the smaller monitors. Same with the original all-in-one-box Macintosh. What this did is make the mouse hotspot fairly large compared to the objects and the desktop space. You could actually SEE and FEEL that the hotspot was definitely on the object you wanted and your clicks were VERY accurate. For those of you who used the old Macs, Amigas and Ataris, think back... how often did you have to click a second time to select the right object? How often did you have to double click again to launch an app or open a file? How often did you have to click a second time because the wrong menu object was selected? In my recollections this was pretty much never. I didn't start noticing this sort of interaction with GUI objects until we broke the 800x600 barrier and many of us were still using 12" or 15" monitors. Then when we broke 1024x768 and 1280x1024, things REALLY got out of hand until you got at LEAST a 17" monitor and I went with a 21" just to be able to use those resolutions and still have some accuracy.
;P
Don't believe me? Try a simple test (if you can pull this off with your OS or hardware):
Linux:
If you're running X Window System and it's properly configured for multiple screen resolutions, press Ctrl-Alt-Num KeyPad + and cycle through to your lowest viewport. Your desktop size won't change, but the number of pixels displayed on the screen will, giving you a low resolution window to your high resolution desktop. Try moving around pointing and clicking on objects now that you can see their pixels a little better. See if you make a miss WITHOUT trying to make a miss. I'll bet you can't.
Alternatively you can change the actual resolution of your desktop to whatever is available in your config by typing:
xrandx
This will list what resolutions are available that should look a little somethin' like this:
SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh
*0 1024 x 768 ( 321mm x 241mm ) *70 60 43
1 800 x 600 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 70 60 56
2 640 x 480 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 60
3 640 x 400 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 60
4 400 x 300 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 60
5 320 x 240 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 60
6 320 x 200 ( 321mm x 241mm ) 60
To select one of those, do this (example for 640x400):
xrandr -s 3
Of course if you're a KDE or Gnome Jock, just use the GUI utility to select a resolution. Boring.
Windows:
If your driver allows, you should be able to select at least 640x480. You can either go to Start | Control Panels | Display or right click on the desktop and select Properties. Then in the dialog go to the Display properties. Once there, select the lowest resolution you can. If your driver provides some alternative display control tool that you're already familiar with, use that.
Sure, going down to a low resolution like that makes your available desktop area much smaller which is also a hinderance to getting much done. But, right now we're focusing the accuracy of selecting objects on the screen. If you do this for a minute or two, you'll notice that your accuracy is very likely higher than usual. Unless your drunk or have problems with your mouse skills... Now, imagine having this kind of accuracy AND a nice large desktop! That's WHY a 30" monitor can increase productivity. The obvious: you get more desktop real estate to work with. The less obvious: your interaction accuracy increases. I know someone else tried before, but I think that only other way to work
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Now I feel better with the amount of space on my screens, I can move things around and get them set up "just so" and it makes me feel better which definitley isn't a bad thing and has an impact on the bottom line. I doubt you could measure my performance improvement though. At least not in any way that would justify the extra $1000 or so, you need to pick up a lot of extra seconds here and there to do that and you might just get more bang for the buck all together by getting rid of the foosball and xbox that seem to burn 20 to 40minutes out of every work day.
17 LCD on power book for Mail/IM/calendar and 23" Cinema Display for Day to Day work. I am much more prodcutive now as I can read more slashdot comments without having to scroll. I haven't tested my moving files, but like most others I do not think mv has much to do with screen size :) In all honesty having the 2 screen is helpful as it allows me to see more of my work and not flip as much.
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I've found a lot of use for dual screens at my work. There will be times when I'm reproducing some issue and need to tail several log files at once until I see what I like.
Lots of other times I'll be working with two documents. One per monitor.
I also code in one monitor, with specs/IMs in the other.
I think dual monitors are beneficial over one big monitor in this case because it allows me to compartmentalize various tasks. Also there's something about maximizing a window. I'm kind of OCD, so if I have multiple windows in a large area, I'd spend too much resizing them until they were "just right".
This sounds like scientific management all over again.
If a company buys this argument and moves to 30" displays in the interest of increased productivity, they're going to expect to see that increase. When I worked at eBay there was a lot of emphasis on measuring the speed of computing operations (not as the computer did them, but as the human carried them out) in addition to measuring our productivity vis-a-vis the job we were actually supposed to be doing.
It is nothing new for companies to want to measure employees' use of time, as time is money (this being of course the fundamental equivalence of capitalism). But the more finely granular the unit of time measurement becomes in the productivity per unit time measurement, the more regimentation begins to seem like tyranny and the identity of the subject becomes unimportant in the face of the domination imposed by the measurement of the process itself.
You cannot mechanise the body, because humans are not inorganic machines. Of course due to the nature of capitalism we'll continue to try to cling to this 19th century notion in order to avoid "wasted" time. You know, time spent making a given motion more comfortable for the human that is carrying it out, as opposed to more fast and repetitios until that human breaks down in some way and is replaced with another. Or, say, time actually spent living and reflecting on living. God forbid.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to individual selection of a large display in order to work in whatever way they prefer (whether faster, more comfortable, etc.) But the point at which companies begin to buy bigger displays specifically in hopes of realizing an "n seconds per operation per employee gain that translates into q dollars" is the old Fordist model at its worst.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
And in Linux you'd lose all that extra time trying to get xorg.conf to work with your fancy new 30" screen anyways.
i've got a pretty sizeable iMac on my desk now, along with a pc, and i found my biggest issue is my mousepad is not big enough to easily drag from one side of my screen to the other. Anybody have specific product suggestions? anybody make a good wide mouse pad? I realize that with an optical mouse it's not really neccesary to have a mousepad at all, but i would still like one.
what does screen size have to do with cp -R /foo /bar ? ;)
Don't Tread on Me
How many times have you seen a computer user who is constantly picking and clicking with their mouse to do the simplest of tasks? I've seen veteran users select text from where the cursor is to the end of the line with the mouse, then click Edit then Cut, then click the point in the document where they want to paste the text, then click Edit then Paste. Shift-End, Ctrl-X, Click at insertion, Ctrl-V would have saved even the fastest mouse-jockey 15-20 seconds on a very common action. There are hundreds of shortcuts - just learning a dozen will save several minutes in a typical day.
Different tasks require different screen real estate, and sometimes bigger is better. But for office app productivity, the low hanging fruit is training.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Even two 17" monitors will give a huge increase in flexibility and productivity for anyone who runs more than one application at a time. Two 19" seems the sweet spot for a tradeoff of price/performance.
However, if one of those monitors is dedicated to leaving your email app up at all times, then proper time-management skills are a must. Otherwise you offset your productivity gains with the constant interruption of new emails coming in and more easily distracting you from your work, since they are right there, waiting to be read. In a busy environment, with mail and IM, that second monitor can act like a phone that rings almost constantly unless you are disciplined when you need to be.
Give me multiple large monitors. PLEASE.
/.).
I work every day deisgning circuits and PC boards and working with mechanical 3D modelling (Solidworks and ProE). These things take up screen real estate like it's free, and my productivity depends heavily on being able to see a large area of whatever I'm working on on-screen at a high level of magnification. Big screens do that. Small screens do not. Right now, because of a job change, I have a single 19" LCD on my desk, and it's killing my throughput (but then again, so is
More area is good for people who deal with visual work.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
I couldn't decide whether one big or two smaller would make me a better employee, so I split the difference and got two 30" screens. It kicks much butt. On the primary screen I have half a dozen 100-row xterms open for the programming aspect of my job. On the secondary, I keep email, open browser, stickies, and little utility-things for instant convenience. It's made me do my job not just faster, but better. That's an easy win for my employer.
For those of you muttering about command-lines and how real productivity gains are to be made there versus using larger screens to drive a GUI better, it's important to remember that "typing" is something most people do only in an email or word-processing program. The computer itself is to be interacted with by dragging, dropping, and drooling. Oh, and clicking like a maniac whenever something unexpected happens. Given the way people work, more screen area generally lets them work faster, whatever they're working on. Teaching them a different way of working is orthogonal to this issue.
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I absolutely agree that a small screen can reduce productivity for all natural reasons, but if you already have something like 19 inches, that's when you won't need more for most tasks you get in touch with.
I'm personally using Dell's 30" screen and I've actually got two of them at home. I've noticed that for regular tasks, the screen is simply too big because you're forced to move your head all the time.
Most people haven't experienced it yet, but applications are better fit in smaller windows, so browsing a web site like Slashdot is not pretty on a 30". That's why I have a smaller 20" screen next to my 30", because it does best what my big screen can't, and that is browsing web sites and other applications with similar needs.
I believe that two small screens increase productivity FAR MORE than a larger one with the same desktop area. Multitasking on a single monitor is difficult and not as difficult on two monitors because it's more natural to split two tasks on two monitors instead of just one giant.
Full Tilt
Expanding on Mr. McD's comment:
What you say is true in Microsoft Windows. But since Mac OS 6 or earlier, the zoom button on a Mac expands the window to the smaller of the size of the document and the size of the screen. If your document is 80en wide, as much source code is, the window won't get wider than 80en plus window decorations if your source code editor follows the applicable interface guidelines.
Only if we're talking about a physically larger screen. Higher resolution without higher physical area is higher DPI (dots per inch). If you increase the number of pixels, keep the area at the same number of square inches, and keep the font sizes at the same number of pixels, the glyphs become so small that many adults cannot easily distinguish them.
As a very recent sort-of convert (I bought a Mac for the nice hardware and dual-boot between OS X and XP but still spend more time in XP than OS X), I've learned that most Mac applications don't have a simple take-up-the-whole-screen maximize button the way Windows ones do.
So with Mac applications you would still need to manually size each app to fill each screen. On the other hand, the OS seems to have this nice window tiling function that would obviate a need to manually size multiple applications on a single monitor.
FWIW We have been running multimonitor in our offices since Win3.11 days. We see a typical 20-40% productivity increase by adding a 2nd monitor. In fact there is not a single employee here who does not run at least duals. For some jobs it makes a lot of sense, for example accounting or coding. For equity traders it is essential. Our traders typically have 8 or 9 18" monitors running at a time (on 3 PC's) each is 1280x1024. Bigger firms I know of run up to 5 PC's per trader. Things like charts can easily be monitored from your peripheral vision while priority items and text based objects can be in direct view. I do the same thing as a tech person - I run 9 monitors and use them to keep my syslogs, Firewall logs, MRTG, etc in plain sight all the time. I know what's happening everywhere at once, and it cost very little in the scheme of things. Think about it this way: you have tons of horsepower in your PC or Mac. The monitor is your only interface. Maximizing it only makes sense if you want to extract full value from it. Would you use your PC through a peephole? Yes there is a point of diminishing returns, but.. That said, I'd rather use pairs, triples or quads of monitors rather than one big one. It is easier to differenciate where each app is going since you have natural borders, it is less expensive and by adding a bracket system (like Ergotron) you can format them any way you want (4 in a row, 2 over 2, etc) try that with 1 screen. ;)
For the bean counters, look at it this way:
Take an average salary of $35k
20% of salary is about $7k, divide by 12 and you get $583.33
- this is what the incr in productivity (at just 20%, and we often see higher) could be worth, per month.
We are assuming that you could either:
- have 20% fewer employees
- OR each employee you have could do 20% more things each day - and that there are things that could be done..
Your ROI could be literally 1 month. That's a good deal no matter how you slice it.
Bottom line: You can purchase a dual video card and a pair of 18" plasmas for less than this. We've been at it since 1996, and never looked back.
JM2C, YMMV, and the usual disclaimers apply..
Maybe it's not a problem, when someone uses big monitor for some time, but when I switched from 15" to 19" it sometimes took a while to find mouse pointer. I'm curious how much pointer finding would slow normal operations on 30"
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
There's a difference between *feeling* you're more productive - than actually *being* productive - pun unintentional. You know - the age-old argument between working harder vs working smarter.
95% of all sigs are made up.
Running a 30" Dell LCD here:
BEST MONITOR EVER!!!!!
$2380 Australian
2560x1600 + FARCRY = WIN
The only people we found who got a gain from the larger monitors were those with multiple windows they needed to monitor. Those people loved them.
One of our developers has the dual LCD monitor setup. It seems to work for him. But I would much rather focus on a distinct area where I'm working than have hugely wide windows where I can't quite see everything I need.
The employees gain productivity from a large monitor, obviously, but they also lose some because they spend time bragging about it to coworkers.
So a study by Apple reveals that buying monitors matching their new product will help you. Wow, I'm shocked. Probably just as accurate as the studies showing vegetable oil is good for you (never proven) by Margarine producers (whose product is made of vegetable oil).
If I pay someone to research whether or not you should buy my product, it's a moot point. They're going to publish the results I want... for you to buy my product.
Sweet! This would leave me more time to read slashdot at work.
Does a bear shit in the woods?
How does moving something a longer distance take less seconds to do so ?
I work as the IT and marketing manager for a medium sized architectural firm. When I first got here, everyone had pretty nice workstations (and top end quadro video cards), but only one 19in monitor per station. Since then, I've upgraded everyone to a second matching 19in monitor and I've heard nothing but great comments. Architects can now have a clean cad drawing on the right, while on the left side keep all their toolbars and email client on screen. This alone has noticably sped up reply times to our clients (since our employees see their emails waiting for them until they reply), which is always a good thing. And the workers here are a great deal happier. Not a bad improvement for only $250 per work station. Of course in all of this, I've been able to aquire dual 24in monitors and I've never looked back. Seeing everything in 1920 x 1200 times two is awesome. Now everyone here wants to go with dual widescreens. As soon as the dell 24in screens go below ~$500, I'll start upgrading everyone again.
The fact that more screen real estate leads to more productivity has been obvious to me for a very long time, and I didn't need trivializing studies like that to know it. As soon as 21" monitors got down under $1700, I insisted on 21" screens with 75Hz vertical refresh rate as a MINIMUM spec for all developers, and anyone who had to deal with big spreadsheets, graphics, or documents (to see two full pages side-by-side). Finance guys would grumble, but not for long, and noone ever complained once they had theirs.
This 30" screen is heading in the right direction, but is not there yet. Same for dual monitors. Using small monitors (and 30" or dual is still small) is like being forced to work in a vast space through a small porthole.
What we really need is an affordable single screen about 60" wide and 25" tall, preferably gently curved aound the viewer so that all points are relatively equidistant from the eyes. Somewhat like a digital drafting table (except for the curve). Easy to use, and doesn't get in the way of your work.
I can also see arguments for a full quarter-sphere or hemisphere video setup, essentially a full field of vision, like an airplane cockpit. But even if video real-estate becomes as cheap as newsprint, I'm not sure that it would be worth the floor space.
*at least here in the US
I'm actually in a situation at home where I can compare both side-by-side. I have a PC with XP on it running two 20" wide-screen LCD panels, and across the room, I have a new Mac Pro with a Dell 24" LCD display. (Ok, granted, not quite a 30" like they use in this study ... but should be close enough for the purpose.)
Despite having 40" of total space on one system, vs. only 24" on the other, I *still* prefer the single 24" display, all things considered.
The fact that you can angle each viewing area separately is more of a nuisance than a benefit, IMHO. I'm always finding one of the displays gets bumped so it's not sitting right up against the other one, and the gap between screens is distracting. I also find that with dual displays, I tend to want to angle them just slightly inward so they have a slight "wrapping around my viewing area" effect, rather than looking straight on at both of them. But again, that always seems to get bumped out of place if someone wants to play with the controls on one of the panels or whatever.
With dual displays, I'd also be happier if games would start making use of them. As it is, I don't think I've ever gotten a piece of software other than MS Flight Simulator to take advantage of dual monitors. (I recall seeing somebody's instructions for making Quake 3 use dual monitors for a wide-aspect game spanning both of them - but it required software rendering, which made it horribly slow.)
I tend to agree, until a certain point. There's a reason CRT monitors rarely come in sizes over 21 inches, other than those low-resolution "monitor-style" TV screens. However, when the screen becomes sufficiently wide, like with the Apple Cinema LCD, then two screens end up being far more productive, due to the viewing distance being equal and how the screens move independently. Plus, two smaller screens are able to work off of a standard dual-head video card, whilst Apple's monster requires a specially-made video card
I currently work off of a 19 inch CRT, but am moving to two 17 inch LCDs soon.
I have a 20" monitor at work and it does make me a lot more productive than the 17" at home - but that's mostly a testimonial to Visual Studio's lousy UI design: 1280x1024 just isn't enough space. Sticking other stuff on a second screen wouldn't make VS itself any more useful.
I generally prefer 2 monitors to one large one. I don't think I'd go larger than 20", especially if I was paying for it; I use a 15" and a 17" at home. Of course, 2 monitors isn't ideal with all programs: Visual Studio can't be spread out as easily as CodeWarrior, for example.
Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
I design online courses for a university. It involves video and audio production, web design, constant communications. This is a small school so they were used to a "one-size fits all" approach to equipping their staff.
When I spec'ed out the computer I wanted to work on, they didn't flinch at the dual-core CPU, huge storage or very high-end video card, the dual-layer DVD burners or the 4 gig of RAM. But when I told them I wanted TWO 19" Digital LCD monitors they gasped "Why would you need TWO MONITORS?" But I had their trust and they went ahead and got me the two monitors. At first, I'd have faculty come to my office and they'd shake their heads and smile at first, but then they'd watch me flipping around windows and making room for tasks without having to minimize the document that I'm working on. Watching me work for about 2 minutes is enough to demonstrate how much more productive this setup has made me. I've worked like this at home doing digital audio and video for years, so I've developed a way of working using two monitors that suits me perfectly.
I won't say it's started a fad here, but I know of several faculty who now use dual monitors (one's a theologian!) and I heard an associate professor trying to convince IT to give him two screens: "I've got TWO EYES don't I?" I wish I'd thought of that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am an engineer and I have a double monitor setup that uses a 14" laptop screen and a 17" external screen. Not quite the same as a 30" monitor, but it's similar. I often find it quite useful to have the screen real estate that I do. For instance, I'll open a document that I'm writing on one screen, and the technical program (ProE, Excel, another document, whatever the paper is based on) on the other screen. I can have both programs displayed at readable and workable sizes. I don't know how much "clicking and dragging" will save the average workplace, but I don't have to print out a copy of my reference material. I can also re-run a model if I need another example case or if I need to create a figure; I can continue writing other sections while the program runs. This is a HUGE time saver for me. It lets me get back to Slashdot WAY faster. :)
As the general consensus is saying, two monitors seem to be better than one.
Some have stated 3 or more is better. I agree, because my own setup is a 3 monitor setup with a laptop that uses Synergy to allow for my mouse/keyboard from the desktop to scale over to it.
I have a 19", 21", 19" setup. All are same brand(Samsung), and same goes from my laptop (Dell with Samsung 15" LCD). While work related attributes are productive in my point of view, gaming and watching movies, would be better suited on a single large 20+" screen. Since my third LCD is on a different video card, I have my HDTV turner card set to this monitor, so I can play games and watch TV at the same time. Sure my chair has been ass printed for my ass only, and I've gained an extra 20 or so pounds over the past year or so. But that doesn't account for productivity!
I devote my life... $#@$@Y HEART ATTACK $@#$^B
"Don't Forget to Salt the Fries"
I don't have enough room on Dual 19" monitors to run at full speed when using WSAD/Eclipse.
And I used to be on a single 17"!
I can open more perspectives directly- have a *full* code window (can you even believe they would put you in an environment you can't read all the code on an 80 character line without scrolling?)
Now I need a 3rd monitor to have the browser with web app in.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
first: when you work with your computer you usually use one window for a long time (text processor, image editing software, rendering software, programming language IDE, browser) but this alleged "productivity gain" comes in situations where you switch windows a lot, which you don't while being really productive
and second: you gain MUCH more productivity if you don't use the damn mouse at all... I have many virtual desktops (KDE) I force a chatwindow, a small shell, mplayer and a buddy list to be thin windows at the right and lower margins of the screen (they are on all desktops, but blocked out of the controllbar) - I can activate them via Alt+1...Alt+4
almost every other program (they are configured to stay on the upper left and don't overlap the margin programs) has its own desktop, so I can "switch windows" by just using the hotkeys for the desktops and if there are more than one window on a desktop, I can still switch them fast by Alt+Tab (the Alt+Tab list is very short, since the margin programs are not in it and the programs from the other desktops aren't in it either)
when I started using mainly the keyboard, THIS was a real productivity gain...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I'm a habitual maximiser when using WinXP, for two simple reasons:
Naturally, as screen sizes get larger, the rules may change. The extra space taken up by window dressing becomes less relevant, the amount of time required to move the mouse all the way across a high-res screen to the far corner goes up, and of course most applications simply don't need the full screen to themselves (and indeed suffer from it in some cases, such as web browsers displaying text blocks too wide for comfortable reading).
It makes sense that with the increasing prevalence of widescreen laptops and large, high-resolution desktop screens, we will move away from the maximise-by-default habit. Personally, I'd love for my GUI to include some of the simple features mentioned by others in this discussion. For example, with a 2560x1600 30" Cinema display, I'd like to have say four quarters of the screen (task bar excluded), and have "maximise" mean "expand to exactly fill this quarter". Then drop the resizing window dressing for "filled" windows, and disallow any accidental moves of those windows except for dragging their title bar to jump it to another quarter of the screen. Add some sort of "mouse hold" effect at the edges of active filled windows (not in general) and you've got all the benefits of the old maximising approach, but in a useful context for a high-res display. (This is the point where someone helpful tells me where to find the tool for WinXP that already does this... ;-))
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Recently I read an article in NYT Magazine about "Life Hacking." Part of the article talks about Microsoft research into productivity and how they have also found that more screen space = greater productivity. A great read found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru. html?ei=5088&en=2864cc65d74cefb8&ex=1287115200&par tner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
... in research that could get me a larger monitor at my employer's expense?
Thanks.
Game... blouses.
When you're a coder or a graphix designer, sure: Bigger = Better. But for the office tasks they mention. Now way. Spend the money on some training!
I have one monitor attached to my RHEL4 box, where I use KDevelop, etc for writing php code.
The other monitor is attached to a low-powered windows box useful for thunderbird/firefox/internet explorer (have to check my webpages).
One mouse and keyboard: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Sure, you can't drag windows from one platform to the other, but copy/paste works and you can share mouse/keyboard.
That's the most productive I've ever been, two 19" crts at 1600x1200. Now I just have to wait for 19" LCDs to get that kind of dot pitch.
Maybe they should have reminded participants of Alt+Tab before running experiment
//Didn't RTFA
SHUT UP! Everybody just SHUT UP! This is NOT the time to examine or question these results! This is the time to show your boss this scientific, scholarly article and get him to decide to give you a great honking big expensive Apple screen!
Now Sshhh! Sshhh! Quiet.
Print. Walk to office, walk through door, show boss article, exit through door, walk back to desk, sit down, go back to reading slashdot.
Well, dual displays help give you a set boundary between code and email, or code and version control, or code and specs, etc. etc.
Code and Slashdot?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... what happens with a 42"? Forget that, I can get rid of half my department if we install a single jumbotron.
Where I work everyone has dual 19" LCD's we also allow people to telecomute from home. Quite often I see people comming into the office instead of working from home because the dual monitors just make everything so much easier.
The article has things oversimplified. It's not a larger monitor that makes you more productive. It's more real estate that makes you more productive. With that 30 inch monitor came a higher resolution. A 30 inch monitor at 800x600 is not much more productive than a 15 incher.
A larger monitor is easier on the eyes, and if it's easier on the eyes, you can make the resolution higher, thus gaining more real estate and being able to put more windows on your screen.
Dual monitors always increase real estate so it's easy to see how they increase productivity. Getting a larger monitor doesn't always increase productivity unless it includes an increase in resolution.
Once again this proves that it's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I just got a 30 inch, but now I am less productive since I now run XP instead of Linux on my desktop.
I try to switch to a new window.........and we switch a few seconds later. Not all the time, but when a couple of app are running this is common.
I try to drop a email in a folder to sort stuff........ and I have control back, just a few seconds later.
It drives me insane. Over Xmas I plan to revert to a linux box.
Funny how sluggish a dual Xeon system with GBs of RAM can be when running XP... Can't wait for Vista.
i use a 14" monitor at my work!!
The world is not fair
My Blog | Badsh
This question is a double edged sword. On one side, you have the physcial size limitation of the screen, but you always have the option to change the resolution to something higher...
On the other side, you take a large 30in monitor with its massive '2500 X whatever' resolution and things may appear to be too small for most. They may lower the resolution to something readable, similar to the highest resolutions of a 19in LCD.
Personally, I think 30in on the desktop is a bit excessive, but then again, I play WoW on my 42in plasma at 1920x1080.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
If a single 30 inch screen can half the time it takes to do my job, imagine all the free time i'll have if I order dual 30 inch screens.
so if my company has 80,000 employees, but buys 40,000 30 inch screens then we can fire 60,000 people!
Hooray!
Probably, as will multiple monitors. Screen real estate is extremely important in a lot of cases.
That said, productivity increases related to screen real estate have flattened off since a long time. Most of us who need it already have large and/or multiple monitors. And yet we find ourselves scrolling, tabbing, rearranging windows and wanting for more.
But more area becomes unpractical past 500 square inch / 3000 square cm due to the mandatory rubbernecking, and upping the resolution beyond 150 dpi is not effective in showing more information.
Clearly, some disruptive technology is needed to continue improving the presentation of information from, and interaction with, multiple documents or applications. Any ideas ?
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Then perhaps the study shows that your job productivity will go up.
If that really is your job, try using a shell script using mv/move, then go home.
if your desk is not big enough for a 30" monitor, you must demand a bigger desk!
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
As a mechanical engineer, I tend to integrate parts into assemblies. It is very useful to have two screens: one with the part I'm currently working on and the other with the assembly it fits into. The only problem is that my CAD package is MDI. In other words, when I switch between sub-windows, the toolbars do not switch screens. So when I'm working on the assembly on the second screen, I have to reach back into the first screen for the toolbar AND menubar. Keyboard and mouse shortcuts can only do so much.
I suppose a larger screen helps, but you still have the problem of over-reaching for the toolbar and menubar.
Hey SolidWorks! Give us the option to use SDI!
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
I wonder which one would be more productive for others. A small monitor/screen with a virtual desktop manager (assuming user knows how to use it) vs. a big screen without a virtual desktop manager.
;)
I seem to be more productive with a virtual desktop manager on a small screen than a bigger monitor. Having a big screen AND a virtual desktop manager doubles that.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
To increase productivity how about treating employees with respect, not increasing work loads till were all at breaking points and stop freaking blocking all sites on the internet that might be in the least bit fun!
damn it abit of down time every so-often improves performance.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Quote:
"But simply enlarging a graphic display or workspace won't help users navigate large, complex information environments and diverse content sources. How information is organized, presented, integrated, and controlled directly affects how easily and thoroughly users will analyze and understand it -- especially in mission-critical and time-pressured situations."
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
This is a no brainer when working in web development environments. Being able to see the source code and gui output simultaneously is incredibly useful and most certainly increases productivity.
Touchscreens would make us even more productive, now that the screens are big enough tell the difference between different areas with even big fingers. But instead of just making them cheaper, so using a stylus doesn't make an LCD PDA much more expensive, they should make them much more accurate. Find the actual pixel at the center of the touched area, and set the cursor above it, just visible at the fingernail point. And accept multiple simultaneous touches, so we can move from the mouse/touchpad's single point of interaction to a real model of how people work with objects even on a screen.
A real innovation would be an interactive textured surface. An electromagnetic or maybe MEMs clear film that changes texture from flat through a range of maybe 8-16 or so "roughscale" positions aligned with the pixels. Our fingertips could pick up edges of GUI widgets, or tell whether widgets are active or triggered, while we're touching them. Multiple fingers can slide across areas to define them. The multiple sensory feedback confirmation with the visual graphics will make us more accurate, more natural, faster and less exerted while keeping our attention on the work instead of the tools.
Once we cut out the middlemouse we'll finally have moved away from the basic teaching tools, like mouse and "file/folder volumes", that helped us from the physical office to the personal computer. These big screens give us the place to finally do all our work, instead of being mainly the scoreboard for the games we play with various crude input devices.
--
make install -not war
Maybe not workwise but you can bet they'll have amazingly productive WoW accounts.
Anyway, as a mostly Windows/KDE guy, I don't see how a bigger screen can possibly cut more than a few seconds out of the job of moving files between folders in a Windows environment. Windows users usually have only one window displayed. Rarely two. I can't think offhand of a job that needs more. Unless you use a very carefully contrived test environment that deliberately impedes file selection I just can't see a major time savings ... for Windows users. I did that very job every Saturday on a fuzzy 14 inch monitor for years to back up my database before I finally made up a .BAT file, It surely did not take me 30 seconds to open two windows, scroll to the file I needed to copy and drag it to the destination. Would a (non-fuzzy) 30 inch monitor have helped?. It might have cut 3 or 4 seconds or so off the job.
Cutting and Pasting cells in Excel? Yes. You can see more cells on a bigger screen. But it seems to me that the time saving is largely because of Excel's truly awful (and non-Microsoft-CUA compliant) handling of cut and paste. I doubt there would be that much saving in a better designed program that actually cut to the clipboard and left the data there. (Almost all programs are better designed if you ask me).
So, anyway, I have my doubts about this study's applicability to non-Mac users. I'd like to hear the opinion of folks that use both Windows and Macs.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Of course we all want those big displays...
;-). I found in general that not
But I'm not sure if there's so much gain. I find it very useful to have different
desktops for different purposes eg one for communication (Mail, Web) one for
writing/editing, one for software development, and one empty. The reason
is that I actually DO NOT want to see my Web browser or email client
when debugging C++ (too much of a temptation
being exposed to windows that are unrelated to the current task increases
concentration, in the same way that I always clear my office desk when starting
a concentration-intensive task (new algorithm, brainstorming session).
Not seeing everything there is is a notion that is also behind abstraction and
black box thinking, which is core to computer science.
Another thought: isn't a bigger screen a bit like a bigger flat (US readers:
read 'apartment')? More space may also mean more cleaning up related activity
(deleting unnecessary windows)....
I would agree that a larger monitor allows most tasks to be sped up, thus increasing productiviy.
On another front though, if I had a 24" or 30" monitor at work, I would be a happier worker, and happier workers work better..
On a personal note, my home productivity of web development increased greatly after going from a 20" LCD to a 24" widescreen LCD. In reality the difference in resolution (1920x1200 vs 1600x1200) seems marginal, but whether when working with code, images in photoshop or any side by side document, the 320 extra pixels have a huge effect.
Using this logic...
:)
If a 30" gives me more productivity, then just think what I can do with a 55" mounted on my wall can do...
Sweet!! All I needed was a reason to get one....
Because moving files around is all I ever do all day. Plus, most of the files I ever move around are big enough so that the time it consumes is more in network bandwidth than anything else. Is apple claiming that bigger screens will enhance my network bandwidth as well ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I suppose if all I did all day long was manually transfer files from one window to another, it might be true.
Too bad Slashdot get's in the way of my mouse.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I currently have three monitors attached to my PC at work: A 20" LCD in the middle at 1600x1200, a 19" LCD on the left at 1440x900, and a 19" LCD on the right at 1280x1024. They are joined as virtual single monitor. On the middle and right monitors, I have SQL Server enterprise manager open with five database tables displayed, complete with all their data. On the left monitor I have an editor open with a View definition that references three of the tables. It is easy to verify that the View is correct with everything in front of me. Also, with all the tables open, I realized I had a redundant column in one of the tables, and a couple unused columns in another table. I wouldn't have realized that if I couldn't have them all open at the same time.
Multiple monitors is a no-brainer. Would you use a desk that only has enough room for one piece of paper on it? As they get cheaper more and people will get them. I bought these myself (my company wouldn't do it) because it makes my work day a lot more pleasant and productive.
Dilute! Dilute! OK!
Or switch to Linux or Windows to actually become more productive.
...c'mon, tell me where you apply.
... and so on... ...once the comfort factors are disturbed hell breaks loose and employees become babbling kids. Relocate these staff to somewhere temporary during some renovations and see how they complain. Ask one or two to do some work on the road and they'll moan like hell. Work at home programs (apparently being favoured by companies as they mitigate the risk or terrorist attacks or natural disasters) turn into do-nothing-at-home programs.
Deviating from the submission slightly and concentrating on some of crap in the TFA:
"If you're used to a having a 15-in. or 17-in. laptop and then go to a smaller resolution laptop, you can realize [the difference]."
When I was younger and less wise I would have thought so too. I went from a 21" CRT to a 15" laptop and for the first few days I was trying to figure out how I could arrange my desk to actually accomodate the 21" monitor *plugged into* the laptop. Then I saw the light and realised how much more productive I was when I was untethered. The reason I saw the light was that I tried actually *working* as opposed to putting together a useless series of metrics and fumbling around for data to fill my 40 page report.
Anyway to the "insightful" part: Anyone of these conssultants ever stopped to think that the 17" laptop screen is going to be further away from you than the 14" screen? Any of them stopped to realise that the 17" screen is basically tied to the desktop and actually *reaching* the monitor in order to adjust to a more comfortable viewing angle is often a 'tall' order? There are many benefits to a smaller screen and I haven't got round to swivel-round tablet screen machines that can be held in one hand yet.
Coming back to the distance from your eyes, a big advantage of the wide screen format for me is that the screen is just off the top of the keyboard (thus closer) and you can push the thing round your desk to suit your viewing angle without worrying that the momentum of a tall screen jutting high up into the air is going to put stress on the hinges.
A lot has been said in the TFA and in the responses here about the advantages of two screens. For someone who is tied to the desk, yes. Data input? Sure. Answering support tickets, watching your servers or following up stacks of emails then sure. If you're some kind of drone (anyone read the Bill Gates interview?) you'll like two screens.
"... would estimate a maximum 5 percent productivity gain for workers using a larger monitor. "But you're not going to see the boost in productivity you'll see by adding a second screen," which could increase productivity as much as 30 percent, Stack said."
*If you're tied to your desk*. To me this is a bit like the "Christmas Turkey" syndrome. The company decided to give every employee a free turkey one xmas. The first year it went down really well but then the second year the Jewish guy decided he wanted to mark the Jewish holiday instead, and the Greek Orthodox, and the vegetarian,
To conclude: I'm happy with my 15" laptop. I almost traded down to a 12" model (Dual Core mind you) recently but in the end I didn't have the guts. But I'm constantly working on transferring more and more of my work to my PDA. I look askance at these desk-bound big/dual monitor folk who fumble like hell when they're on the road.
Right now I have a bunch of windows and terminals open, like most of you. I can see most of what's going on behind any application I have focused. Larger screens for people like us would be beneficial if only for the increased "real estate", which means we can have more crap open that isn't painted layers deep.
Now go look at some random user's desktop. You'll notice that, by and large, most people run all applications maximized. It doesn't matter what they're working on -- any applicatoin that has focus will take up the entirety of the desktop, leaving only the taskbar at the bottom.
They did this when it was 640x480. They did this when it was 1024x768. They do it now that they have 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Of course, "most people" in office environemnts, for reasons I can't fathom, never bother running at full resolution anyway, even on LCDs. Give them a nice large 21" LCD screen that can do 1900 x 1600 and they'll still crank it down to 1024x768 because "it's too small".
Give "most people" a larger screen and they'll have one single larger window focused to the front. For the average yob, a larger screen just means more useless dead space around the tiny portion of the window that actually contains useful work or information.
I have a really hard time believing that even something as simple as file copying would be affected by this for most people. From my observation, this is how a user copies files, assuming they're on Windows:
1. Open Windows Explorer. Usually by the longest method possible (start > programs > wade through three columns of useless crap until they find Accessories > Windows Explorer).
2. It'll open maximized because that's how users run things. If for some reason it doesn't, they'll maximize it.
3. Spend a few minutes trying to figure out how they can use the square highlight to get only the files they want to copy (ctrl-click and shift-click never occurs to them, nor does using "detail" or "list" mode -- all icons and previews, baby!) This is after they've spent a few minutes trying to remember where they put their files, and how to navigate to that folder.
4. Copy or cut the files. If they use ctrl-C or X it's a miracle. Most will right-click and find "copy" or "cut" in the menu.
5. Open another instance of Explorer. Screw around for another couple minutes hitting the Up arrow and Back arrow until they finally find the folder they want to put the files in.
6. Right click, paste.
7. Done. Usually. Sometimes they have to go back and figure out why they just copied fifteen empty files called "New Word Document [1].doc".
Please tell me how a larger screen is going to help with this. As far as I can tell, a 30" screen to most people means an IE window 30 inches wide.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
"If your company uses 17" or 19" monitors, 30" monitors will make the employees more productive, Apple-sponsored research says."
Hm, my previous job we had 15" monitors, so I guess that's why they never upgraded to 30", the productivity from 15" to 30" must be bad.
I use a KVM on my desk. I've not seen any dual monitor KVM stiches.
... even though I bought the 24" Dell LCD to go with my Mac Pro!
I was doing some work recently involving switching between a large matrix in Word (don't ask), and an even LARGER matrix in Excel. On a 14.1" laptop screen. Even though I used freeze panes in excel to keep relevant information on the screen, I continually got lost scrolling around both documents and alt-tabbing between them. I'm not kidding when I say I was EASILY twice as productive when I hooked this computer up to my 24" display. If you've been thinking of upgrading, go for it. Dell and Apple want $1800+ for a 30", but you can get the Dell 24" for $700ish, which is the best money I've ever spent. Frankly, for most people, they'd be better off saving $400 on the computer and springing for the bigger screen, than buying computer speed they only use occasionally. You interface with your monitor CONSTANTLY.
I agree 2 screens would be okay, but I hate the "focus" problem.. in some OSes/Apps, dialog boxes pop up in the middle of your screen, or between the two displays. Also the asymmetry bothers my OCD. I'd rather have 1 or 3. But once you get to 2 or 3, suddenly you're going wider but not higher. I like the aspect ratio of a single widescreen more than two smaller screens side-by-side.
that's 13 seconds maybe 100 times a day for those who do such work
that's 22 minutes freed up during the course of a day.
now when you add up how much time it takes to wait for your computer's hourglass cursor?
it may not seem much while you wait.
but it can add up to hours of time saved during a work week.
that's real productivity.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If someone will provide me with two 30 inch monitors from Apple I will happily test the one screen or two screen setup. :D
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
Err ...
So you're saying that in an IT department with 5 employees, if I fire one of them and give the remaining four dual monitors, we'll get the same amount of work done without any added overtime?
-Graham
A lot of monitors go for the widescreen HD look (a very reasonable choice), but I have always wondered why nobody sells a good mounting system for 2 monitors on a vertical axis ("stacked" one atop the other.)
Vertical space is horribly underutilized. If I could stack 2 monitors on top of each other, I would use the space up top for viewing, and the space below for "working." I'm not sure how useful this would be to everybody in every market, but for me, it'd be great (doing web application development and support.)
Anyway, my two cents, I wonder if anybody else out there has this idea, or can tell me why this would be a bad idea.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I used to use dual monitors - CRTs years ago, then 17" displays, then dual 20" displays. These days I'm on one 30".
I find that having one giant monitor frees me from thinking about where my windows should go. When I had two, I always had to decide. It's set up either as:
In the first situation, you always have to move windows off to another place when you want to see them. That requires thinking and action. There's a lot of separation between those two screens. The second case is a bit better, although the OS still considers one monitor as primary, and you don't want to have windows spanning the space.
With one 30" I find that I don't think about which windows go where. The organization happens a bit more naturally.
Still, there are applications where two monitors are great - working in Pro Tools, for instance. That is really a two-window situation, one edit window, one mix window. Still, you have plug-in windows and other stuff, so you have to think about where they go.
When it comes down to thinking about productivity enhancements like this, the little bits of thought it takes to organize your workspace into two compartments really count.
1) Why did the Apple users need to move files? Did they put them in the wrong place? Why not solve that problem first? :)
:)
2) Does anyone have an estimate for when the open-source community will have enough marketing dollars to sponsor such pseudo-research? And how do they plan to get those dollars?
3) How do they rule out that small Macs (since computer = monitor) are just freaking slow? And maybe their users are slow. Why hire slow users?
I use twin 30" monitors at work (we develop applications for scientific visualization), and I must say that it has greatly enhanced my productivity (not counting the time spent cleaning up my co-workers' drool from the floor). I think it is much better to have two seperate monitors (no matter what the size). Cost aside, it not only provides better visibility (both viewing planes nearly perpendicular to your viewing direction), but it helps users organize (and find) windows/tasks more efficiently. This essential when working with large screens or your productivity will be obliterated looking around for what you need.
--
I constantly come across people at work that have 17 and 19 inch monitors and they run them at 800x600 res. Drives me up the wall trying to help them with a problem and they're shuffling windows everywhere. What's worse, you have people who run this res on LCDs which actually results in worse looking text because this isn't the panel's native resolution.
After using dual 19" LCDs at my last job, I bought another monitor for home, and I love it. I have a 21" and 19" dual monitor setup. Takes up a ton of space, but I don't need much desk space at home. It even makes me more productive at home... My daughter can sit on my lap and watch her Noggin videos on one screen while I do whatever on the other. If I switch over to my Windows box on the KVM, which only displays on one monitor, I can play a game and have the walkthrough up on the other screen just in case I need it. (I am way behind the times, still playing Half-Life single player mods) When I work from home, I have my laptop and one monitor as a dual setup, and can have IM up on the other monitor. Wish I could afford flat panels for the space savings, but I can't imagine going back to a single monitor setup again. When I am in the office, working off of the one laptop screen is sometimes excruciating. I am way past the "cool" factor of dual screens, it is extremely productive.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Having a screen so large that portions venture into your peripheral vision will give you a headache after a while and after the initial coolness factor wears off you will begin to think twice about playing video games such as an FPS with such a monitor.
All single-monitor setups are for dweebs! I have a single 19" panel at work, and three 20" (1600x1200) Panels at home (soon to be my place of work): "trio20x" I have 5.7 million pixels ever before me, and yes, the productivity boost is worth it. The only disappointment is that my fish screen saver will only work on one monitor at a time. :-(
Other interesting monstrocities from the same company:
"trio-ultraHD"
"powerscape-ultraHD"
"arena24s"
One piece I think people skip over is the benefit from rotating certain monitors to be oriented vertically. Most non-media-related computing tasks rely more on the y-axis (emails, code, web pages.); being able to see 100+ lines of code on the screen lets you have a lot more context.
In addition, it helps to be able to maximize multiple windows rather than have one giant screen space and to have to manually resize (or use the clumsy tile windows capability.) If I had one 30" monitor it would drive me nuts; instead I have 3 20" Dell LCDs both at home and at work and it makes a huge difference to be able to maximize two windows on the left and center monitors and to leave the right monitor for email/IM/VMs. (I also usually have about 40-50 windows open at once, which some find strange -- a bunch of python shells, Komodo, Visual Studio, VMware, remote desktop, other text editors and tools, skype, AIM, winamp, photoshop, etc.)
The actually productivity boost comes from not needing to alt-tab, and thus avoiding the concomitant mental context switches; it's great to be able to look at a google search or API reference on one window while actually writing code instead of flipping back and forth and back and forth.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
No, because you'll lose out on having to pay for the mathematician you'll have to hire. 4*120!=500.
Rich
Other than a few apps like Photoshop, most commonly-used things don't really work well filling a 30" screen. In our office, we've found that a pair of 19" CRTs does a marvelous job of increasing productivity, and doesn't cost nearly as much as the 30" monstrosities...
(Don't get me wrong, I'd still like a 30" Cinema display.)
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Does this mean that this toy that I've been playing with for the last 10 years is meant to actually do work? You mean someone actually uses a computer for something other than a medium on which to either view HIS/her favorite pr0n, or to waste ten hours a day gaining levels in WoW? Why am I asking so many questions? Why can't I stop? Oh Hell?
Don't you hate glorious self-promotion? Visit my Blog
I support an area where users "had" to have 21" monitors (capable of 1600x1200 and beyond) who *refused* to set their resolution above 1024x768 because if they did suddenly text got too small for them to read. Pointing out that they can change document zoom on screen within the application, and set Windows to display fonts larger within Explorer fell on deaf ears.
A good number of the users weren't comfortable above 800x600, which is just painful to use.
We're talking about users who "need" to have icons all over their desktop so they can find ANYTHING they need.
If you want to see productivity gains through better technology, first ensure that the users of that technology are fully trained and getting the most out of the tools that you've already provided. Only then will you know if better tools are needed. And if they are, be sure to train them on the new tools.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...if the employees aren't suffering? Besides...they're on salary anyhow. They can just work later, and suffer more!
Wildcards are your friends.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Windows is perfectly capable of being used the way I described as "good" -- with various windows positioned around the screen, overlapping each other, and whatever else. I do so all the time on my Windows machine at home: Xchat in a corner, Firefox dominating the middle area, IM windows wherever, Thunderbird kind of in the middle, Winamp in another corner, and so forth.
The problem isn't the OS. The problem is the way most people use it. In fact whenever my less-tech-saavy friends sit at my computer for whatever, as soon as they open Firefox, the first thing they do is hit Maximize so that it dominates the entirety of the screen.
Now, if I had a larger screen at home I'd use it. In fact, my 19" CRT that does 1280x1024 just isn't cutting it for me anymore and I'm looking at a 19" or more CRT (I loathe widescreen). And this is on Windows.
It's not Microsoft, it's the users. They'd do the same thing in Gnome or KDE and you know it. I've seen them do the same thing with OSX. They either don't want, or don't know how, to manage looking at more than one thing at a time.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
It's the resolution. Having a 32" monitor that pushes 1366x768 (wide) give the same productivity as a 19" monitor that pushes 1280x1024. What does improve productivity is dual monitors. If you can have 2 of your applications running in full screen mode, and can cut and paste between them, that definitively improves productivity. I do web development and I always code in one window and see the result in the other. As far as big screens is concerned, they wont help that much until they get better resolutions. If I can get my hands on an affordable 40" LCD monitor that pushes 3200x1200 (2 time 1600x1200), then I'd go for that. But as we speek, it's way cheaper to get 2 19" and hook them up together with xorg. All of this talk makes me think of something I heard years ago that made me laugh... It's not the size of the wand that counts, it's the magic in the stick. :)
I'll be watching my Apple stock go up :)
GP gives an option for "20% fewer employees" and also estimates productivity gains at MINIMUM 20% "but we often see higher." RIF from 5 to 4 employees is well within the spirit of the GP.
I don't need a mathematician, but you need to learn to read. Please go away.
-Graham
Since when was 1996 the win 3.11 days? Wouldn't that be the Win95 days?
Of course it would make me more productive, the bigger the screen, the more terminals i can use at the same time! ;)
Bias check...
What people forget, and what the study with all its flaws doesn't touch on either is the mental energy cost of switching from paying attention to the actual task to reorganizing the workspace and then back to the task. I'm not a cognitive psychologist or whatever other discipline would have the tools to quantify task switching costs, but I have seen and felt many times how I and people I have worked with loose inordinate amounts of energy to task switching.
I'd love to see a study which addresses this and tries to quantify the productivity increase one can gain from minimizing task switching. I am convinced that in the context of using large displays this is bigger than Amdahl's law as you invoked, even though your argument is certainly valid.
Remember how much we save by going by 17" monitors instead of those expensive large screens! Our budget cannot hold it. Now go back to your [100k] salaried job and do your work!
©God
As an example, we went from 3 IT staff to 2 while growing four-fold in terms of services, servers, desktops and locations to manage. It's certainly a complex issue, which is what I think you're alluding to. Mangement software, commonality of parts, architecture, etc all play big parts as well. We also have far fewer SPoF's today which makes fire drills less common. But to stay on topic, I get a lot more done since I am not constantly opening and closing things. I am also taking in more information simulaneously. When I troubleshoot or test, I can see the effects of what I am doing in several dimensions at once. When I code or write accounting reports, I still see my email, IM, the status of every PC at my location (we monitor not just disk and memory but services), etc. Try it on 1 or two desktops and see if it works for you. We started off in trading and accounting, then moved into IT and finally everyone else.
The real question is, given that Apple's prices are almost identical, do I go with their 30" (2560 x 1600 pixels) screen, or two of their 23" (1920 x 1200) screens?
If Apple wanted to do some really useful research, they could find out if the head turning, central gap and long horizontal mouse movements of the twin set-up outweigh the benefits of about 600,000 extra pixels.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I also need a new processor, more ram, better graphics card, and a leather chair... for productivity of course!
You can also add Systems Administration to the dual monitor usage section previously listed. I would say that I would always prefer 2 smaller monitors as opposed to the single larger monitor. It really is cool to have 2 individual graphical sessions on the same box.... or... I can easily reconfigure the xserver to bring up both monitors sharing 1 session...
I appreciate the versatility and functionality of the dual monitor setup.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
that just drag and drop files all day?
That must get boring after like 10 minutes. Modern-day file clerk, I guess.
Mailto: boss@bigevilcorporation.com
Forwarded message attached
See boss? If you get me a bigger screen, the 18 hours a day I put in will get even MORE mundane tasks completed! This 9" green screen is KILLING ME!
No, I don't think he is.
:-)
However, if you had six employees, you could remove one.
http://blog.grcm.net/
I wonder how much of these gains are a psychological effect (I didnt RTFA so this may have been addressed). "Wow, boss thinks I'm important enough to get me a new BIG monitor...I better work harder." Or, conversely, "That bastard got me a new SMALLER monitor, screw him...."
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Do anyone know of a software that replicate dual monitor functionality in a single monitor?
"I have a PC with XP on it running two 20" wide-screen LCD panels, and across the room, I have a new Mac Pro with a Dell 24" LCD display...."
"Despite having 40" of total space on one system, vs. only 24" on the other, I *still* prefer the single 24" display, all things considered."
Two 20-inch diagonally across displays does not give you the equivalent of a 40-inch monitor!
Very roughly speaking it's equivalent to a 28-inch* but I can't say for sure without knowing the aspect ratios. I wish monitors were specified by surface area... though back in the curved-screen days that would have caused many problems I am sure.
(20^2)*2=X^2 - assuming that surface area is proportional to the square of the diagonal, which is only true for a fixed aspect ratio. the *2 is from doubling the number of monitors
X=20*sqrt(2)=28.3
p.s. Graphics cards have historically been unable to use acceleration on more than 1 display, which is why games don't support it. I think that's changing nowadays.
Better question is: Why do you have a Dell and Mac Pro when you could just install Linux or Windows on the Mac Pro and skip the Dell altogether?
Not my intention to draw a definitive msft timeline. Simply stating what we used when we used it.
"Pfeiffer's testing showed time savings of 13.63 seconds when moving files between folders using the larger screen -- 15.7 seconds compared to 29.3 seconds on the 17-in. monitor -- for a productivity gain of 46.45 percent. The testing showed a 65.09 percent productivity gain when dragging and dropping between images -- a task that took 6.4 seconds on the larger monitor compared to 18.3 seconds using the smaller screen. And cutting and pasting cells from Excel spreadsheets resulted in a 51.31 percent productivity gain -- a task that took 20.7 seconds on the larger monitor versus 42.6 seconds on the smaller screen.""
---->
Cost savings of using a bigger monitor: 13.63 to 21.9 seconds
Cost savings of switching from a Mac to a PC: 3.4 to 5.8 years
A computer that isn't a a trendy piece of shit: priceless
There are some things good code can't buy. For everything else, there's OS/2.
Well, first off, I never said the other PC was a Dell. I guess you assumed that since I have a Dell 24" monitor on the Mac. But it's just an AMD Athlon 64 clone PC I built before I got the Mac.
Anyway, I may eventually get rid of it as I do have XP on the Mac Pro in Bootcamp. But currently, it's nice having 2 separate machines so my kid can use one while I'm on the other, or so guests can check their email, play games, etc. on it without messing up my primary machine.
When I saw a user with all of their windows maximized, I used to think that they were probably a novice user (or perpetual novice). Most non-technical folks do it this way.
Recently, I re-evaluated that opinion when I saw a developer using Eclipse maximized. His 17" monitor was clearly not usable with an application that had so many plugin panes simply because he didn't have room for anything else on his monitor if he wanted to size the window so that he could have all of the required views on the screen at the same time. I think that the maximized windows anti-pattern has more to do with the limitations of display size rather than because people are too stupid to do it the 'proper' way. In fact, I'd say, that the decision to maximize in a limited display is a sign that they're not so dumb after all.
However, on a large monitor, it is my opinion that mazimizing windows is a true anti-pattern because the benefits of drag and drop and multiple application interactions go away when you can only see one at a time. Most of these developers don't even know that, frequently, the easiest way to change directory in a CLI is to type 'cd ' and then drag a directory from the file browser to the terminal window. There are lots of similar GUI patterns that make working on a computer much easier.
Unfortunately, these things are often thought of as 'tricks' because the OS's have downplayed their use since users didn't seem to be using them. Most computer use is menu and wizard driven and there are very few applications that use a true OOUI.
It's one of those bizarre situations where the design was ahead of it's time and the lack of use of the features fed back to the designers who dropped the advanced features just before the technology caught up to the point where these advanced features would have actually been useful. I guess it doesn't matter that much because most users have been so heavily trained to use copy-paste and other broken metaphors instead of drag-and-drop and gestures, so that even though it may now make sense to use drag-and-drop more, nobody will bother because they're used to the old way.
It sort of reminds me of how an inferior technology like the old Palm torpedoed the prematurely advanced and poorly marketed Newton. Now we have to live with a bad paradigm.
On the other hand, having a 23" HD format monitor now makes me question Fitt's Law, which breaks down when the menu is waaay over there.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
I have to disagree and say that I absolutely notice the holistic gains going from a 15" to a 19" screen size. I couldn't stand a Vertical screen anyway, because much of what I do is comparison of documents side by side.
But I also think the benefits fail above the 20" screen range. Like Cake and Pizza, there is such as thing as overkill. (Not to mention prohibitive costs!)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If thats the case the I must realy be productive when I am on my home system. http://www.xpandtoday.com/supercomputer/ This is an 8 monitor system with integrated 9th monitor/touchscreen.
--AD
This is actually a fascinating subject. I am not a fan of mashing heavy pixels ... there's a minimum physical size below which I just can't get any work done.
... with more pixels.
So a larger screen can support the same approximate pixel size
Thus a 19" screen wins over a 15" screen any day of the week.
I'd hate to see 1280 pixels across on a 15" screen. **Shudder**
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Apple isn't going to like this very much, but two 19" screens increase productivity far more than going to one 30". 30" may give you more desktop space, but tracking from one side to the other takes an eternity, unless you're at a really low resolution. Humans work much more efficiently when things are compartmentalized; it's much easier to systematically place and trace the location of something when the container is broken up into smaller sections. I've been working with two monitors now for almost a year, for video editing. The standard video editing station, these days, has two monitors side by side, with one or two televisions off to the side, separated from the monitors. One could argue that having a 30" screen would allow for a 3 foot long timeline, but at a certain point, it's too much to bite off and chew. For most multi-window applications, two monitors is far superior to one larger monitor.
The only application I use that would be better served by having a huge monitor is music scoring (I use Sibelius, but Finale would have the same benefits). In that case, the entire work area is one window, with a few smaller paletts off to the side. Unlike Photoshop, however, where the combined palettes take up more space than the actual workspace, a full orchestral score takes a HUGE amount of space, and it's nice to not have to scroll around to find what you're looking for.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I'm an EE, and I've found that the more screen real-estate, the better. You can have a ModelSim wave display open enough to see the signals of interest, while still having its "project" window and a bunch of emacs windows open at the same time, and I don't need to alt-tab between them.
It's also useful if you're doing PCB layout: you can have the schematic window and the layout window open and visible at the same time.
Of course, the reason for using two monitors was that one large monitor to cover that real estate was usually a lot more money than two smaller monitors, although you needed a dual-head graphics card. Now, pretty much every graphics card supports two displays.
I still think a pair of Apple 20" Cinema Displays makes more sense than a single 23" job; more pixels for the same cost.
One thing I really don't like is the takeover of the 16x9 screen aspect ratio. It doesn't serve text-based design entry very well at all, although you can have several different editor windows open next to each other.
Who drags and drops files anyway?
Give me PIXELS, not screen size. WHy do people bother with 19-inch LCDs if they are only 1280x1024? By 17-inch LCD at home is 1280x1024.
At work, I have a 21-inch old-school CRT cranked up to 1600x1400. PIXEL, PIXELS, PIXELS!
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?"
I bought a 30, and I can honestly say that when coding, I find myself wishing for a smaller monitor. While watching a movie, it's lovely, but when leaning in to concentrate, I find myself turning my head far too often. I am thinking about returning to a smaller dual-monitor setup.
oh yea, and i'm sure this is the millionth time its been said, but this story is definitely too old to be on slashdot (although I don't know why the discussion wasn't brought up earlier, so good post anyway.)
Does it make pornography more "productive" ? That's what consumers really want to know.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I spend about a hundred hours a month programming an access database for my company. It "HAS TO" have a slick looking front end, which will all know is super easy in Access... I got them to spring for a 20.1 in Monitor and it's great but now I'm beggin for a second so I can have the source code on one screen and the front end on the other. I guarenteed you will all the Alt+Tabbing I have to do, I'll save at least an hour a week. For the little these things cost in the long run, you would have to be pretty Draconian to actuall want to break it down into dollars and sense, it should just be common sense. Common sense also dictates Ronda from the office pool doesn need a 24 inch screen to view e-mail and print reports. A 23 inch will do just fine.....
If I could see all of this in one go, I could use both my hands, instead of just one:
http://www.asciibabes.com/amy-halliday-01.php
For mounting your multiple monitors exactly where you want them this company make some very useful products.
3 96/PRDID/127/Default.aspx
;-)
http://www.ergotron.com/tabid/71/ctl/Product/mid/
I've been using the dual head version for about three years and have just bought a triple head stand, along with three brand new 21" screens. Very nice
I have 2 monitors and I absolutly love it. Copy/Paste actions or file moving and especially for debugging. Just run the App on one and the code on the other. Effectively I have a 35" screen. Now if they were both flat panels I'd be even happier.
If closed the mind be, so then the mouth should follow.
You are a fucking nitwit idiot. They emit about 1/1000 of what a CRT emits, and even at that CRT's have never been shown to have even the hint of connection to any cancer. Fucktard.
As a programmer it helps me to have a coupple large he res monitors on my desk. I like my iMac because it's big and has a small footprint. I do wish that it had a couple extra ports for plugging in additional monitors though. If Apple is going to go down this marketing path I think they need to look into making multiple monitors a standard option when ordering your iMac. A 30" monitor with two 20" monitors would be great.
Of course they need to make mousing better too - with a big monitor it seems to take forever to mouse around your screen.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Going by moderation, not a very good one. ;-)
The number provided by the manufacturer is a measurement of the diagonal, not the area (which is obviously not in inches, but in square inches).
That means a direct calculation of combined screen space isn't as simple as simply multiplying 20 inches by 2.
Additionally, 24 inche monitors are capable of higher resolutions, which throws a wrench into things when computing viewable area.
How ironic that mac did the poll - considering they are a large manufacturer of large screen monitors. What type of people were they doing the survey on that it took them 42 seconds to copy and paste in excel, and 30 seconds to move a folder into a folder?!!?
I have a 15" PowerBook, which I use at work, and a 20" Display at home. My Partner has a 12" iBook.
All these systems run Mac OS 10.4. Moving from the 15" laptop to the 12" laptop makes a massive difference to how long it takes to complete a task.
However, speed benefits are not for quick tasks such as a google search or reading email.
The benefits of a large screen under OSX for me, are when I use 3-7 programs to complete a task. Such tasks often require seeing multiple windows simultaneously, dragging and dropping information between applications, not having to use exposé to find the relevant information, and perhaps most importantly being able to quickly hide all the other tasks, thus isolating just the information related to the task at hand.
If you have not used an Apple Display or OS X, it is worth checking both of these great products out. I have used dual displays. However, I would personally prefer a larger canvas when using OSX, although two of these big displays would be good. Should you be wondering I am still accepting donations for my 30" make me smile fund.
I have not found a noticeable difference between performing tasks on the 15 and 20" displays. However, the desktop display is nice an bright and sits at eye level, this makes working at the desktop workstation a lot more comfortable.
Nonsense. Assuming the figures are anywhere near accurate -- or heck, assume simply that a positive improvement in the time it takes for a given task occurs, regardless of the number -- you must take the per-iteration times being quoted and multiply them by the number of times per period they are performed.
A 13.63 second time savings on a single file-move doesn't sound like much. But how often are you moving or copying files? I do it all the time. Let's say I do it 20 times per day -- that's a savings of 272.6 sec/day = 4.5 minutes/day. 4.5 minutes/day saved just on file-moves? That's over 20 minutes/week.
What would you do with an extra 20 minutes/week?
Then there are the other tasks cited. Do your own math.
(Now, personally, those particular numbers seem overly-optimistic. But my quarrel in this post is not with the specific statistics, but rather the analytical mindset surrounding the stats, i.e. the "it's only a few extra seconds, what does it matter?" mindset... Seconds, taken in aggregate, matter. Like the Congressman from the 1980s said, "a nickel here, a nickel there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.")
The improvements, if there are any at all, are productivity improvements by economic definition. They are *useful* improvements if more work can actually be accomplished in the same amount of time. They are *cost-effective* improvements if the extra work performed in that saved time is worth more than the cost of the new monitors; that is, that the cost-benefit analysis comes out in favor of bigger monitors.
TFP needs to be beaten with an analytical stick. Better yet, the editors need to do a better job of filtering out editorials in story links.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Right now (at home), I'm on a 30" screen at max resolution. There is a LOT of room on this screen. So what do I do? I fill it up with stuff so I really end up working on a smaller screen again. I've got Google Desktop running on the right hand side, and usually have a few "extra" windows open (IM, etc.), so basically I'm back down to a regular sized monitor. I do love having really huge, really trippy backgrounds, though.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
...but how you use it that counts.
Lindsey
@>-->-----
just love this new development. Warning, PDF.
Really? My experience has been the opposite! Both my flatmate and I have a 23" HP widescreen monitor, so while he was out of town I hooked both monitors up to my gaming rig for some seriously widescreen action. Once both monitors were plugged in and Windows was thinking of them as a single display, every game I tried worked just fine. There's definitely something to be said for playing WoW or San Andreas at 3840x1200 resolution ;)
As a professional employee, I feel qualified to offer an objective, insightful, completely neutral, unbiased answer to this crucially important question:
Yes, absolutely, indubitably 30" flatscreens do indeed produce an immense productivity increase and should be immediately rolled out to all knowledge workers without a second thought!
Dell and Apple wholeheartedly concur with my assessment.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Apple sponsored research says that using their $2000 30" monitor is good for office productivity, news at eleven.
...using Gnome on FC5 and 2x19" monitors is an experience many times better than WinXP can offer in its out-of-the-box state.
:)
What I look for in a dual-monitor setup:
1. Video playback in both monitors - Linux, check. Windows, NA.
2. Easily configurable taskbar between screens - Gnome, check. Windows, NA.
3. Easy dual-head setup - Linux, sort-of. Windows, check.
4. Window snapping - Gnome, check. Windows, NA.
With the use of proprietary and often expensive programs Windows can be cajoled into providing some or most of the functionality I specified above. But straight away, without effort, and a hole in your pocket? You would be dreaming...
I think it's plain to see who the real winner is. Now, to conquer the three-screen Linux setup.
Though I personally use two very similar monitors, and at work have two nearly identical monitors (except that Sony changed the height of the base by about 3/8" when they changed models, requiring shims under one of them to keep them level), I wouldn't mind experimenting with a setup consisting of one large monitor and one relatively small monitor.
I remember long ago seeing (and briefly using) a desk where the monitor sat in a hole in the desk, angled back up at the user. This hole could be covered with glass, or not, as lighting necessitated. This concept (though not necessarily below the desk surface) could be combined with a large monitor on the desk to make the second display take up very little precious real estate. Your keyboard and main monitor are right where you expect them to be, and in between, maybe at a greater distance, is another monitor.
I would imagine that having the "status display" monitor at a greater distance would make it less distracting when you are not actively viewing it, as it would not only be in the periphery of your vision, but at a different focal length. It would also work well in action games, where you are already accustomed to looking up or down for a status display -- only now your main screen (turn on) can be devoted to full game immersion.
This is not unlike the idea of running a large monitor behind a laptop, except with the distances to the screens reversed.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"I've looked at the various display sizes and, if one could get the same DPI on all displays, an arrangment that used a WQXGA (2560x1600) center screen and then two cheaper UXGA (1600x1200) in portrait orientation (1200x1600) on either side might be useful (or other combinations where the portraits' native horizontal is the same as the center's vertical). Unfortunately finding the same DPI is difficult, leading to using CRTs where you can adjust the display settings to match, but which will effectively increase your bezel gap."
:-)
One such combination that I know works is the Dell 2001FP (20.1" LCD, rotatable to 1200x1600 portrait) and the large Dell 3007FP (30" LCD, 2560x1600). Requires quite a fair bit of desk space, and to be fair it's an expensive proposition. I would *LOVE* to add that 30" panel inbetween my own dual 2001FPs, but can't justify the expense.
I suspect this arrangement would be fairly optimal as compared to three 2001FPs, as the 'main desktop' is very spacious, and can host the current activity without any real space constraints. The other two panels can host the 'extra' stuff - web, mail, iChat/Skype windows, terminals (termina?) and so on.
Employers may argue that it is an unnecessary expense, but I firmly believe that having a capacious desktop or desktops is no less essential as having a decent amount of genuine desktop. And, if you're doing this professionally (as most of us are) then it seems rather short-sighted to skimp on primary tools.
John (dual panelling at 3200x1200, but wishing for 4960x1600
nVidia's driver has a feature called Gridlines .... (google for it)
...
... it's much easier to get things through "congress" at home :)
This lets *you* define regions on the screen and then maximize windows to fill that region. It even works well with multi monitors too.
I have my 20" widescreen at work split about 60/40 (code, web, office, other main side-by-side windows) and the 17" beside that split into 4 quarters (for email, remote consoles, etc).
After that you manage the maximizing with
* double-click to go to normal screen size
* ALT-double-click to max to area bordered by gridlines
* SHIFT-double-click to max across total span of monitors
* CTRL-double-click gives a full screen-size without Windows decorations
I'm yet to try it out at home on the 17" + 24" + 17" setup.
As an aside, it's taken 5 years of lobbying to have my company *allow* me to buy a 2nd LCD of my own with my own money
I think that this question can't properly be answered as none of the OS comes with the tools required to make the most out of the larger panels or dual panels.
for example: windows should lock to edges of other windows, you can't easily maximize to a user defined area, you can't easily move windows between monitors, or stretch across them. some parts of the OS go fubar, the taskbar etc, or they position dialogs in the 'middle' of a dual screen so you can't read it. etc etc
at the moment to make the most out of either system you have to hunt down third party utilities, and hope they work and don't screw other things up.
basically a OS needs this support built in from the beginning, and none of the current ones do.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
Most displays in their standard orientation these days arrange each pixel as a red on the left, green in the middle and blue on the right. When you rotate the monitor 90 degrees clockwise, you get red on top, green in the middle and blue on the bottom. The relevant X windows extension can describe either arrangement to software that wants to know for maximum image sharpness, but it assumes that the orientation is same across the entire screen. So, if you attempt to make a virtual screen from some rotated displays and some unrotated displays, applications will not be able to take advantage of subpixel positioning on all physical displays using the current X extension.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Spirit schmirit you weasel.
Rich