Dual Monitors
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When I switched teams to a tech writer position, my company provided me with a second monitor. At first, I didn’t like it. The cursor was driving me nuts and I was constantly moving windows.
Now I can’t stand working on a computer or laptop with one monitor and wouldn’t mind a three panel monitor. Currently, I have two flat monitors side-by-side.
It makes working so much easier. As I grade student participation in the forums, I’ve got the class spreadsheet open on one monitor and the forums on the other. No going back and forth. I can also have a student’s assignment open along with the grade sheet and the answer sheet. Here’s where three monitors would be nice.
As I write a story, I can have email open so I can review the notes from the interviewees and have the article open on the other screen to write the story. I often have email open on one and a browser open on the other.
Don’t know how you measure productivity, but I know I’m more productive with the two as I’m not wasting time ALT-TABbing back and forth while trying to remember info.
Even Bill Gates uses three monitors.
Articles on dual monitors:
NYTimes: Virtues of a Second Screen
- PC World
- About.com shows one landscape and one portrait monitor.
- Microsoft instructions for turning on dual monitors
- Multi-monitor resources including laptop solutions
- and many more…
Products:
- MAX Displays
- Ergotron stand
- Doublesight
- Digital Tigers
- Ergo in Demand Stands
- 9X Media
- DONZ
- Radius 320
- Panoram Technologies
- MASS
- Matrox Dual and Triple Head2Go - ooh!
- CineMassive
[tags]monitors,Meryl K. Evans[/tags]
4 Comments
Jason
October 2nd, 2007
at 11:00am
I totally agree with you on this! At work I’ve got the dual 19″ flat panels and it makes it so much easier when working with multiple files to not have to alt-tab all the time. I go home everyday and whine to my wife I need another monitor it just feels like something is missing when that second one is not there!.
Rob Cambre
October 3rd, 2007
at 5:55am
I agree also. I have four “small” monitors. (17″ hp LCD’s) and it is great. In fact the entire company is at least dual screen. Productivity is up and more importantly the Cool Factor rose by 123%.
Brent
October 4th, 2007
at 9:22am
Well I totally agree. I have 2 monitors at work for keeping my workflow balanced as well as keeping things just better organized. An article Chris published referenced this as a “separate partition”, I totally agree.
I don’t have this setup yet at home, as desk space is at a PREMIUM in my wee little PC cabinet (note, not a desk even).
For those of you who do multitasking like me, I have my html related shortucts to documents and folders on one monitors desktop, and on the other the remainder of the things I might work on, on any given day. My job currently requires a certain amount of customer service so I am always shuffling back and forth and this setup (while I was really reluctant to try it) has just really improved both my work environment as well as my overall productivity. It is INCREDIBLY difficult to move back to a single monitor setup. My only supplement at home is that I have a 19″ widescreen monitor for home. I find I do less and less work at home even though I am now better equipped for it
Daneen
October 25th, 2007
at 6:51am
I use my dual screen capability as well. It is highly supported at our company, as we have many products for mounting displays and laptops. I use an Ergotron Neo-Flex Notebook Stand for my laptop, then an Ergotron LX Arm for my 19” LCD. My productivity definitely has increased since I’ve been doing this…now, I’d like to add a third monitor!! I usually have my email always open on my laptop screen so I can see anything urgent coming in, then a web browser and applications open on the LCD screen. Here are a couple of links to the studies on multi-monitor solutions:
http://www.necus.com/necus/media/press_releases/template.cfm?DID=1947
http://www.hp.com/sbso/solutions/finance/expert-insights/nec-multi-monitor-study.pdf