Business Technology : Bigger Computer Monitors = More Productivity
Business Technology : Bigger Computer Monitors = More Productivity
It’s interesting. I mean to read the title of this article on the WSJ my first thought is “Well, Duh!”. But I suppose for folks outside the tech industry that might not be the case. I remember when I first heard someone talking about using dual monitors I thought they were nuts. But I gave it a try and found it to be very useful. After a couple years I even bumped that up to three monitors. Unfortunately that much neck movement began to bother me and I dropped back to two monitors.
Currently I have replaced the multi-monitor setup with virtual desktops. This has been my solution for about 3 years. I have a desktop for code, one for browsers, one for communication and then the last one runs terminal and file explorers and ftp clients. I have found this to be beyond measure in simplifying what I do. And from here the only thing that made me more efficient is the 22″ monitor I attach to my Mac Book Pro when I am in the office.
So the article finds that a 24″ monitor is more productive than to 18″ monitors. I believe it. and I bet if they mixed in virtual desktops the increase in performance would be even better.
I had a choice a little while ago of getting a 24″ monitor or 2 21″ monitors (for the same price). I ended up getting the 24″ but have been wondering if I should have gone for 2 slightly smaller ones instead.
21″ is plenty big enough and for the applications I use I like to have them full screen.
I love being able to have an IDE, browser, database etc open in each monitor. This for me is much better than alt tabbing between applications on a single huge monitor.
If you’re a designer it could be a different story though with all the palettes etc with Photoshop (or your design app of choice).
The photos here are a little outdated. I now have one 22″ flanked by two 21″. My money is always on more pixels.
http://polygeek.com/310_life-of-a-geek_how-many-monitors-does-it-take-to-make-a-geek-happy
I started using dual monitors and virtual desktops.
Virtual Desktop 1:
One monitor = code Editor (+ database editor if applicable)
Second Monitor = Testing Browser, documentation, Code related Google searches
Virtual Desktop 2:
Monitor 1: email,
Monitor 2: Open Twitter; YouTube playlist / iTunes /whatever
My main machine is a laptop. Monitor 1 is a 20 inch Dell plugged into the external connector. Monitor 2 is the same 20 inch Dell model, and is plugged into laptop via a USB video card (I think it’s a Tritton USEE2 ). Fine for testing, but it’s not a powerful video card (and can routinely crash if I accidentally let Eclipse switch over to Monitor 2, I see the bluescreen of death.
I was thinking of switching over to a PCI video card so I could rotate monitor 2 (instead of 1600×1200 it could be 1200×1600). The way the USB drivers are loaded makes it extremely annoying (but possible) to keep the monitor vertical. ( It needed to be reset after reboot).
But, yeah, my neck can hurt some days.
What do you use for your virtual desktops? Are you on a Mac (isn’t that built into OS X now)? Obviously I’m on Windows or I’d know the answer to that question =)
I’d be interested to know if you’re on Windows XP, and if so what you use to get virtual desktops.
For my part, moving to two monitors (many years ago) was a huge performance boost. I’ve thought about going to three, but what you said about neck movement makes sense. Now, when I’m in the office, I have “2 1/2″ monitors — a Dell 19″ and an Apple widescreen 23″. I’m quite happy with that combo — the extra width of the Apple monitor is great for extra panels or just having something extra hanging out on the side.