Slashdot Mirror
Using Two Monitors Makes You More Productive?
Double Vision asks: "In my job, I work with several software applications at once. I find that constantly switching back and forth wastes a tremendous amount of time and causes me to lose focus. My video card supports two monitors, so I found a discarded monitor in my office and hooked it up. This has made it much easier to do my job. However, we are getting ready to go through an equipment audit, which means I will likely lose my additional monitor unless I can justify keeping it. How can I make this case? Is anyone aware of studies that support my claim that two monitors makes me more productive?"
After a bit of Googlin':
:)
Two Screens Are Better Than One
The best part is that it was done by Slashdot's nemesis.
I don't agree. I use two monitors AND virtual desktops. It's much more productive to be able to refer to things on one display while you are working on the other. While virtual desktops are handy for some things, such as working on separate projects, they are not a replacement for two monitors. When I'm on my laptop (single screen obviously) I find myself constantly flipping desktops, min/maxing windows, etc. which is annoying. A single monitor can be as productive as two if it's huge, like one of those 30" displays. Even then, my two 21" flat panels give me more physical display area for a fraction of the price of the 30" displays. My two LCDs also use less energy than one crt, and that minimal electricity usage is made up for in increased productivity.
You can try to show people HOW it helps you. Like drag them over and show them how it helps you, all the stuff you do to become more productive. You can always send them this. Also this. is a pretty good one. Just some googling will bring up a swathe of articles claiming statistics, usually up to 50%, so at the very least you can use those, or figure out what studies they use.
Personally, I've got a widescreen laptop, and the added screen real state made me start wondering if I should switch to two monitors to increase it even more! Now I have an old CRT screen to the right of me, usually it has all my documentation/references open while I work. For art programs, especially, it is just unbelievably valuable, been thinking about getting an LCD screen for a while, because the CRT is currently too bulky and too small to place where I want it to be (its like 2 feet away, not quite how most people use it). Not to mention, during breaks, I just switch the secondary to watch TV on it, while I can still do small bits of work.
Yes I'm productive during my breaks as well, its easy when you do something you enjoy.
Unless you are actually needing to see more things at the same time, extra monitors are a waste of desk space and electricity
It sounds like you have never actually used two monitors at once. It's only about 10,000,000% better than virtual desktops.
Synergy is wonderful. Unfortunately, a lot of corporate IT departments will likely frown upon it for security reasons, which is why I never try to use it when I have both my laptop and desktop turned on at work.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Try the links here: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=d ual+monitor+productivity+study
You'll even get a Slashdot article linking to a study done on it:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/1 0/09/137232&mode=flat&tid=137&tid=196
See, that wasn't hard...
If you have to look at output while editing anything two monitors tends to be more effective.
I actually started using a dual head setup years ago (think pre-AGP days) when I had two PCI cards pushing monitors and Windows 2000 had just finally gotten a semi-automatic way to span them. And I've never gone back.
You'd think "ALT-tab" wouldn't be such an effort... until you don't have to do it.
My wife made fun of it, until I upgraded my CRTs to 19" LCD. Giving me a spare CRT to hook up to the second video port on her nVidia card. Then she found the ability to have research and documentation up on one screen, and whatever she was working on on the other. She's also never gone back.
At my work they have been moving us to Thinkpads for almost all of our production network boxes (test racks are a different matter). They got us docking stations with monitors for when we were in the office. Then I realized instead of that I could use the laptops screen as primary and the docking station screen as a second monitor. On top of that the LCD's they got for us were some nice Dell model that you can rotate to portrait mode. You don't want to know how much faster and easier is it to scan a dual column diff when you have portrait mode...
From a money perspective, if a second LCD monitor costs your company $150, and you make $40 an hour all it has to do to pay for itself in a year is save you 3 hours and 45 minutes. Over a 200 day work year.... Meaning about 1 minute and 12 seconds a day and it pays for itself.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Not sure if anyone's mentioned this (browsing on my phone so not viewing all) but 2 monitors are more or less essential for debugging an app with a non-trivial UI. Nothing like the pain of trying to squash a debugger into 1/2 the screen.
Worst BBC News Stories
"investing" money *is* "spending" it if you've invested it someplace where it will earn you less than you could have earned elsewhere.
/. so people will post the cute-but-sooo-wrong stuff, but I would at least have expected moderators not to tag it as "Insightful."
I know this is
I work at a semiconductor company doing chip layout design. They came through about 6 months ago with upgrades offering the choice: One 24" LCD, or two 19" LCDs. Everyone in my group opted for the dual screens. It is absolutely the bomb because of what the parent poster mentioned. Total square inches sounds good, but managing that space (and trying to look at it) when the height and width are both too big is problematic. Having two discrete viewing areas is a huge improvement.
When doing layout design, it's a very visual, graphical thing. However, the layout is being done to match a schematic, which we also need to have open for reference. Plus there are other utilities and tools in the software for managing your list of layers you're viewing, lists of design rule violations to be cleaned up, etc. Having the layout maximized on one screen is great, while the schematic, etc. are on the other screen for reference.
I'm a positionally oriented person when it comes to windows in my workspace. When I had just the one monitor, I used to arrange the windows around toward different corners and edges of my screen. They were sized big enough to see, so they were very overlapping in the middle. It's a Linux station, so I had my window behavior set for "focus follows mouse", but not to automatically raise windows. I set a hotkey to raise/lower windows, so I could just point to an exposed edge of the one I wanted and hit the key to raise it. Or I would sometimes just point in the middle of the screen and start hitting that button to cycle through the windows I had going on.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
The only time you can REALLY justify a dual monitor setup is when your primary job/task requires you to quickly see a whole lot of data at one time. Otherwise, use a multi-desktop configuration where you can assign quick-keys to switch views from one desktop to the other. UNIX and Linux desktop systems( CDE, KDE, Gnome, etc ) and probably others have always had multi-desktop support so you can run apps fullscreen in different desktops and with a keystroke you can instantly switch to the specific desktop. Toggling through the apps with the task-switcher( Alt-Tab ) isn't efficient since you likely vary the number of apps running at one time and switching to a specific desktop will get you right to the data or app you want/need to see.
;-)
Again, unless you absolutely must simultaneously see a ton of data which can only be efficiently done with 2 or more monitors, you'll probably have to snowball your IT department into thinking you need the extra monitors. One thing you might try is to tell them you have epilepsy and a quickly changing/flashing display window could trigger an episode.
2+ displays are easier but saying it's required is gonna take some work. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I disagree. My experiences working in both the public and private sectors have been almost identical to the parent poster's. However, the government agency I worked for was in no position to just "print more money". Our annual budget was determined by legislators. And we had to produce value or our budget would get sharply reduced. The bottom line was very closely watched.
It's tempting to think of the government as being some monolithic entity, but it isn't.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
Try explaining that 22" LCDs cost $360 and give an expansive desktop.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I think he wants more than just his word to back him up.
The best thing he can do is set the manager up with a second monitor so he can see the difference. I am an avid multi monitor user. Friends and family that use my machines have gone to the same set up on there machines. At work, I did the same as this guy and eventual converted the entire department. All but one person (the new guy) now have 2 monitors.
now im up to 4 monitors. I wanted 3, but it was just as easy to do 4 as it was 3. If I had to make a cut, i would drop one. But nobody else is willing to give up there set ups.
If you can't convert others, at the very least mention the advantages now before the audit gets to your monitor. Be proactive at telling your supervisor that its needed before the auditor tells him its not needed.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I agree (I think). I work in local government. Salaries are practically a fixed cost, so someone taking longer to do something is effectively (marginally?) 'free'. A second monitor costs real pound notes out of someone's budget, which is visible and easily measured. The fact that it might well save time (I'm sure it would) isn't even considered. Budget wins out every time. :-/
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the women don't get you the whiskey must
Bill Gates uses three monitors and mentioned that taking even one away would decrease his productivity significantly. That could be a good argument to use.
syns: syn: You'll need to user your own vals for thismachinesnamefromsynergyconfig, 192.168.1.3 (the server's IP), and username (to whatever your home linux path is on the client box).
Syn's pretty cool. I keep wanting to do a workbench / home 4 or 5 screen setup. Old sun box, 2 laptops, my dual-screen workhorse... and synergy. Yum.
Here are some links to some documentation:
. pdf8 344.html
http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/Cin_Disp30_report
http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/00
http://www.petefreitag.com/item/552.cfm
enjoy