Yes, yes, I know the image is triple monitors – but hey, one needs to aspire to the next level, right?
As some of you know, I got a second monitor for Christmas – a wonderfully crisp-looking Samsung 24-inch widescreen to go with my rather squarish Dell 19-inch. There was a time when I thought having dual monitors might have been the height of pretentious nerdiness. When I first saw someone with the setup, I thought that perhaps there was someone who, in addition to being a shut-in geek, was so disorganized (or concerned about the size of his junk) that he needed two monitors and therefore double the space for his material. Command center-like setups were only for spies, really bad movies about spies that also had no clue how computers worked, or for junk-size-concerned geekery.
I am glad, however, that I have been proven wrong, gladly filling the remaining deskspace with my dual monitor, white-hot brightness. Why? Well, a lot of it is simply utility. The amount of real estate on monitors is relatively small to geeks, mostly because we need to have a minimum open of at least 7 things at a time. Yes, tech is to geeks like crack is to a drug addict with a habit, and retailers like Fry’s and Best Buy are our dealers. But this drug is one that has its uses.
Monitorspace between multiple monitors allows us a greater freedom, making multitasking easier (watching a movie while playing a game for one) and organization more freeform (desktop-free purists like me like to have windows open for quick reference). It also is a boon for multimedia freaks like myself who dabble in video editing. Having another monitor to send a pre-rendered video of me getting killed in Aion PvP for the 6000th time is essential to my continued effectiveness at whoring myself out on the ‘Net, after all.
With most monitors surprisingly cheap and the vendors as various as their are for your favorite desktop themes, I encourage anyone with a little extra cash and stuck in the boring standard of a single monitor to invest in another. You’ll be surprised at how much more you can do, especially when you’re trying to work on the next level of your favorite game, writing a proposal for all stores to carry Jolt cola, and researching better ways to use bacon all at the same time. Trust me – it’s worth a try.
I haven't really seen where dual monitors is better than me just running two computers side by side. I don't know maybe I am missing what the advantage might be.
I've just gone to a dual setup and am really liking it so far. It's nice to mine in Eve while I play Everquest 2.
I couldn't work efficiently enough without dual monitors, to me they're a damn god send. The amount of windows I have open at any one time is absurd, so the more pixels I have to spread them over the better.
While, there isnt a terrible difference between running dual screen and using two machines I guess it all comes down to which is more affordable.
I use 2 Samsung 24-inch beasts for gaming / music / browsing and a laptop (which is just a messenger machine) the only downside to all this is that you might need a bigger desk.
While three is overkill (I wouldn't say no), if you work from home or multitask a lot, you'll see a huge increase in two monitors.
Indeed multi-monitors is awesome but you should give KVMing a shot. Multiple PCs on a single monitor allows for some amazing work efficiency assuming you don't forget #2 is there.
I need to trying a bit of both. Using the 2nd monitor to increase #1s screen real estate while at the same time acting as a "head" for the backup PC.