A Dual Monitor Experiment

backBeat writes "This is a descriptive article about one man and his dual monitor odyssey. After reading the snippet I had to read the article: "The productivity increase lasted for about two days. At this point I realized that I could to work on one monitor and watch a full screen DVD on the other. This was pretty cool until I realized how counterproductive it could be. Luckily I am quite adept at concentrating on my writing, while typing, while watching a movie." The Dual Monitor Experiment did not disappoint."

another article

[elid]

There was a good article [extremetech.com] about dual-monitor setups on Extremetech recently.

Counterproductive...

[jonhaug]

... is an understatement. I read two papers, news, e-mail, LinuxToday, Slashdot, solving bridge problems and so on while writing on my assignments.

No, I am not productive, I am addicted. But I don't need a lot of monitors. Fvwm does it all for me.

Two? Try three :)

[neiffer]

I am a teacher and the computer I have at school (running WinXP Pro) has three video cards in it and I love it. The main monitor (a 22") always has my current project displayed and the other two monitors (17", one on each side) have email, MSN Messenger and a news web window always up. It was distracting at first but I found that it eventually gave me freedom to complete tasks without constantly switching between windows. It's especially nice when I am working on lecture notes and I am reading a web-based source at the same time.

Wow

[tliet]

Dual monitor setup, cool!

Enter the Macintosh II [everymac.com], introduced in 1987, it was capable of driving up to 6 monitors at a time.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[Spua7]

And using AIM is also "likely not something that's permitted outside of your home". I would come unglued if it was running on any of my systems. I was unable to RTA due to the server being slashdoted at a record rate. I found his comment about viewing movies while working are probably true.

Virtually Four monitors

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I don't know how this is news, but I'm not aobut bashing. Anyway, with Nvidias drivers, you can have two monitors running and have another desktop as well - resulting in virtually four monitors. All I do is rotate the mouse clcckwise and the second desktop pops up (though it could be argued that it is similar to Alt-Tab). I'm sure ATI has something similar as well.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[DigitalRaptor]

I find at certain tasks I am FAR more productive with dual monitors.

When I have a lot of data manipulation to do it is very advantageous to have one document open on each monitor. Copying and pasting is simple, and doesn't involve switching between programs. They are both open and visible at once, just copy from one and paste to the other.

I do think that sacrificing an increase in productivity (the personal tendency to watch a DVD on the other monitor aside) to save $1 a month is very short sighted.

With LCD's (very low power consumption) that is far less of an issue.

Several studies have shown at least a double digit increase in real world productivity. My own experience would suppport that.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[Gentoo Fan]

And if you do a WHOIS on the domain, you'll see his name as the registrant as well.

Re:Tv out..

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Not just resolution, the scan rate sucks, and TVs also have a tendency to hide detail. The resulting pixel density stinks too, I prefer not to see every individual phosphor cell.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[vrai]

I have two 20" flat screens at work and couldn't live without them. As a code monkey I find the extra screen area invaluable for both coding and testing. I can have a number of terminals displaying the source I'm working on, a terminal to run tests and a web browser displaying documentation; all visible at once. This is huge productivity boost and avoids the need to constantly hunt for which window contains the information I'm after. It's also a lot cheaper and easier than having two computers with a monitor each.

Dual PC = Dual monitor

[gregmac]

I discovered Synergy [sourceforge.net] a while back, and I use it at work all the time now. I have a PC sitting on my desk (Linux), and most of the time have my laptop (Windowws) sitting next to it. With synergy, I basically use my laptop as a second monitor, for browsing the web, reading email (since I have it with me all the time), looking at reference manuals, etc. It's very handy to be able to have a web page open explaining a problem, showing example code, etc, while coding in the other monitor. It's an extra boost to be able to control them with one keyboard/mouse, and be able to copy&paste.

I've also been using a dual-monitor setup at home lately (one PC) while working on a video project, though my second monitor is a TV. It's handy to have the output preview on there though, as it keeps my main screen less cluttered, and I can see what the output will actually look like on a TV. (For some reason, with strobe lights in the background for example, if I watch it on a CRT the whole picture flickers, while on a TV it looks normal .. however, if I actually render and watch the output of the project on the CRT, it looks fine .. likely this is an issue with the way it's doing preview or something, but either way having the TV is functional).

Re:Worse part about dual monitors.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Supposedly XP powertoys has a virtual desktop feature. I thought ATI, nVidia and Matrox all included their own software that does the same thing too.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[jmulvey]

Yeah, and now that you pointed it out, I found out he's pulled this crap before:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/29/194620 7&tid=201&tid=133&tid=190&tid=1 [slashdot.org]

Multiple Monitors

[pipingguy]

Here's a good site about multi-monitor setups [realtimesoft.com].

Dual screens are very useful for 3D CAD work (ortho views on one screen for precise placement of objects, skewed view on the other for 3D view[1]) and for webpage work (HTML on one screen, preview in the other).

Enabling x-mouse (I.E., focus follows cursor) is probably a good idea.

[1] Some people like to put onscreen menus and buttons on one screen and the image on the other, but that seems like a lot of extra mouse movement compared to using keyboard shortcuts for commands.

Re:Thanks for the inspiration

[cowens]

If you are running Linux (or any version of UNIX) you should look into DMX [sf.net] (distributed multiheaded X). You can use your old laptop as a screen attached to a newer laptop and/or a desktop (there doesn't seem to be a hard limit to the number of machines that can be linked).

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was running dual monitors back in 1999, but I think some Mac and UNIX people had been doing dual head for at least a half decade before that, maybe more than a decade.

Definitely more than a decade on Mac -- the Mac II did it back in, IIRC, 1987.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[jmulvey]

He outta know better... After all, Wired Magazine wrote a freaking ARTICLE two weeks ago about how his site got slashdotted on a prior stunt. Sounds fishy to me.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65165, 00.html?tw=wn_story_top5 [wired.com]

Only 2 ?

[Cygnus78]

Why not use more ? Here [realtimesoft.com] is a image of a 10 monitor setup.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[JabberWokky]

Hell, Win98 did it just as easily as the current Windows versions.

A *leedle* earlier than that.

A two monitor setup was pretty common for the original IBM PC starting around 1981. The CGA and MDA (or Hercules) cards would address different memory. Many apps would use the MDA for one view and the CGA for the other. Spreadsheet on MDA, graph on CGA for many spreadsheets (remember, spreadsheets were the "killer app" of the era). Borland's IDEs used MDA for source, CGA for output.

You can go back before that (I've seen S-100 bus systems with multiple monitors, and I think the Z80 plugin card to run CP/M on the Apple ][ allowed a second monitor), but dual monitor usage was fairly common long before Win98.

--
Evan "using 4 monitors in xinerama, 6 if you count X exports onto the laptops"

Ultramon

[seibed]

Users of dual monitors and Windows would be well served to check out this handy little application: http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/ [realtimesoft.com]
I find it not only a pleasanter way of dealing with multiple monitors (over the default vid card or windows handlers) but it has some productivity enhancements that make me more productive and make it easier to relate to the switch.

from their website:

• efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop
• manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar
• control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts
• multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers
• mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation

Link for those too lazy....

[kcb93x]

Windows XP Powertoys [microsoft.com] I've been using the Desktop Manager powertoy for a while - limits you to four (4) desktops, but hey. Just remember to turn OFF 'Shared Desktops' (else all windows show up on all desktops - dumb defaults) I also turn off the 'Use Animations' and 'Show Quick Switch Buttons' as well - Start + {1,2,3,4} to quickly switch between.

Matrox

[wikinerd]

The best graphics card for dual monitor is http://www.matrox.com/ [matrox.com]

More Impressive

[Lord Apathy]

This might have been a more impressive "stunt" a serveral years ago and there had be a C-64 involved. Not that big of a deal today.

When I got my Radion 9700 last year I read that it could do dual monitors. I got out my old spare crt I keep. Plugged it in, fiddled with the settings, and up it came. Two monitors on one PC. Total time, a little over 5 mins. Then I chunked the monitor back into the closet.

Not a big deal. Now the fact that I was slightly inebriated when I attempted and acomplished this task must rate something.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[Saige]

How about both?

I have a dual-monitor setup, with multi-desktop ability. I hate the thought of having to go back to working on a single monitor - fortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

It's especially useful when I'm doing a remote desktop into another machine - one monitor shows my machine, the other the remote machine. I have a switchview that will let me select between the machines, but I rarely use it because it is just more useful to have them both accessible at the same time.

Re:I love my dual monitor

[CMECC]

While not cheap, I use the NVIDIA Quadro4 NVS dual headed card with 2 LCD's attached. Using drivers downloaded from NVIDIA, it works under Linux (Slackware 9 & 10; under both 2.4 & 2.6 kernels). There are some programs that can't handle the second monitor, but most of the time it's no problem. The productivity increase has been noticable.

Permission to Cache vs. Timeliness of Stories

[Mad Man]

was "Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ"

From the Wired article mentioned in jmulvey's post [slashdot.org]

Slashdot didn't respond to a request for comment by press time. On its FAQ page, however, the service notes that while it sees some advantage to caching some of the smaller sites it links to in order to reduce the deleterious effect the crush of traffic has on them, it has chosen not to. In part, that's because Slashdot doesn't want to hurt sites by affecting their ad revenue. In addition, Slashdot is afraid that getting permission to cache sites would take too long and would cut down on the timeliness of the stories it posts.

Maybe it would be a problem the first time Slashdot posts a story, but by the time the dupe rolls around...

Watch the refresh rate.

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Dual monitors can be very beneficial to productivity, but from a health and safety point of view they can be a nightmare.

What didn't come up in the article, as LCDs were used, is that if you don't have both screens running exactly the same refresh rate then it can cause appalling eye strain. Trying to focus on screens running different refreshes becomes very difficult and within 20 minutes or so the eyestrain gets very noticeable

I used a dual monitor setup for a week before giving up after developing a very annoying twitch in my left eye. My right eye was fine looking at a 17" screen running at 1280x1024@85hz but the left was trying to focus on a crappier 17" at 75hz.

The lesson being that if you can't afford to go the LCD route then choose your second monitor carefully, as you will want it to match the primary as closely as possible.

Re:How do you set up dual monitors?

[jollespm]

If you go to display properties and click on the settings tab do you see 2 boxes, labeled 1 and 2? If you do, select the greyed out one and check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" box and click apply.

If you don't see 2 boxes, you probably have to hit the "Advanced" tab on the same screen and look for the tab that enables multiple screens. It will probably have an image of a CRT, a laptop screen, and a TV. Make sure the CRT is enabled. Then go back to the first set of instructions.

Re:Thanks for the inspiration

[Gubbe]

If you're not using Linux, but Windows instead, you can use MaxiVista [maxivista.com], which unfortunately is far from free, but works great. Having the otherwise idle laptop as a third monitor is handy to say the least.

No, I'm not affiliated with them.

Re:Wow

[gobbo]

But unlike macs, PC's actually have more than one app worth running. WTF do you use a dual-screen mac for? Two instances of photoshop?

OK troll, I'll bite.

Back in '91 I was running a Mac with a 19" portrait display and a 14" for publishing a magazine, which was indispensable. In 95 a similar setup I had was also running web publishing, FileMaker Pro development, and Quark and Photoshop, at the same time. In '98 I was using two 20" monitors for all of the above, plus video editing.

Cooperative multitasking's severe shortcomings aside, if you could afford the RAM, classic Macs generally did fine with multiple applications running at once in everyday use.

Interesting note: tried at various times to run a two-monitor setup on Win98 and NT to run Premiere, using a Matrox dual-head or two separate cards, and after various minor frustrations (difficulty keeping alignment, software freaking out, no snap-to-content, centering windows between monitors and other human interface atrocities) we just gave up to save on support time and installed single 19" monitors on all PC's at higher resolutions. On a Mac, it always... just... worked, taking seconds to configure.

Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ

[toddestan]

Multi-desktops don't do a thing for me. What is the use of a graphical application running in a window I can't see? Multi-desktops with a useable preview window might be worthwhile, but the way it's done in KDE/Gnome right now is worthless.

For people that basically have every application always maximized, multiple desktops really don't do anything useful. It's most useful if you have several windows open at once. Say one desktop has IM - the client and several conversations. The next has several file system windows open so you can drag and drop files with ease. The next desktop might have several system monitoring tools open. So for instance, you can bring up all your monitoring windows with one click, instead of several clicks to bring up each individual window to the foreground. It's handy. But hardly nessecary.

efficiency?

[Cynikal]

hey, im all about efficiency, theres nothing like having a game up on my main screen and the walk through up on the 2nd display :D

on a serious note, i cant stand single display anymore, when im coding its invaluable to have a 2nd display with my reference material, or when i work in various sound production apps, and desktop real estate is an important factor. hell if my pci bus wasn't maxed i'd be hooking up a 3rd display for sure. one key factor i found after several configurations is the best setup is if both displays are running at the same resolution, and my only complaint would be how some fullscreen windows want to go and minimize when i access the other display (remote desktop, etc)

Palette Monitors rock!

[heavyboots]

Open any massively palletized application like Adobe GoEvil or Macromedia DreamReaver and you'll quickly see why a spare monitor is cool. Drag all those necessary but not super necessary palettes over to the palette monitor and enjoy being able to access anything without it obscuring your page.

Another use for web coders--have your browser on one screen, your PHP text editor on the other.

And of historical interest, Macs have been doing this since the II came out. It became pretty common-place with the iici and the Quadra because if you wanted a 20" monitor, you had to buy a video card to drive it. Thus the onboard video could be used to hook up a palette monitor essentially for the price of the monitor. We recycled a bunch of 15" monitors in for this purpose when we switched over to 20" displays in the early 90's.