[clue-tech] two monitors - the new fad

[Adam bultman]

Wow, negative attitude "right out of the box", so to speak.

I used two monitors for quite some time - 3 years, perhaps?  Started off 
with dual 17s,. moved to a 21" and a 19", then to two 17" LCDs.  It's 
been around for a while, so I'd hardly call it a 'fad'. 

It's useful if you do not have enough desktop real estate for all the 
windows you need, and can't afford/refuse to waste the money on one of 
the uber LCD monitors (of which your wide-screen varieties are more of a 
fad than dual monitors.)

At my last two jobs, the number of programs I needed running - and more 
importantly, VISIBLE - required more real estate than your regular 
1024x768, and my eyes aren't good enough to be running 1600x1200 on my 
17" LCD monitor.  The cheaper, effective solution is to have two 
monitors.  Run thunderbird if you need it, and on your other monitor, 
run your terminals, your nagwatch, your status terminal, and all that.   
Some people choose to have less-needed things off on one monitor (I know 
a few people who have email sitting up there, off to the side, with the 
'primary' monitor front row, center) but I found it far easier to have 
some things windowshaded (thunderbird) and then spread out my things 
across the two monitors (using twinview).  I required more visible 
windows than I had real estate, so it made perfect sense, and i was a 
LOT more able to monitor multiple things at once, since my GAIM window 
(with jabbers from the boss) didn't go overtop of my Nagwatch window, 
and I neglected to notice that apache was down on a webserver.

Since becoming a 'contractor', I've gone down to one monitor (I would 
have had to purchase my second LCD - it was owned by the company) but 
have made aggressive use of tabs in gnome-terminal, and have been a bit 
more forgiving about what windows are on top of what. Similarly, 
gaim-guifications lets me know when I am getting instant messages, and 
from whom, so that I a) don't neglect the boss, and b) don't have to 
make gaim steal my focus each time I get a jabber.

I've run a number of window managers that let you 'tab' things together 
(like fluxbox), made very good use of programs that allow you to 
'shrink' the footprint of the program (like Eterm being borderless, 
titlebarless, and scrollbarless) but it is simply easier and more 
efficient to have multiple monitors.   Cheap these days, too.

If you are a busy person, either sysadmin or programmer (think 
debugger/command shell  on one monitor and your IDE on the other) two 
monitors will help you MUCH more than that wide-screen jobbies that 
people are snatching up  that simply chop the top off your monitor (i.e. 
remove the top 2" of your 1280x1024 monitor, and then suddenly you have 
a 'widescreen' monitor, omg)

Adam
 

Jeff Cann wrote:
> At work, we hired a new guy about 9 months ago who is convinced that
> having two monitors is a good thing.  My boss got a second one and now
> is converted.  He bought everyone in our department a second monitor
> (these are all LCDs).  He didn't ask me if I wanted one - just a box
> was in my office one day.
>
> I've asked the adopters why they like / need it.  I haven't really
> gotten a definitive list of benefits.  Most people like to have email
> or the trouble-ticket system up all of the time so they can monitor
> it.  I can agree to some extent.
>
> OTH - I think that email is over-used and often just a distraction.  I
> have no email alert pop-ups or sounds to interrupt me to new email and
> I turn my email off frequently.  So, to me a second 'always on' email
> screen would be distracting.
>
> But, trying to be open-minded, I put the questions to the cluebies:
>
> Who's using two monitors?
> Why?
> Are you more/less efficient with your work?
>
> Thanks for comments.
> Jeff
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