Bigger Computer Monitors = More Productivity

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Researchers at the University of Utah say that the bigger the monitor you have, the more productive you are. Personally, I use three 22” widescreen monitors to maximize my desktop real estate. If you want to see some truly impressive set ups, I recommend you check out this thread in our forums for ideas:

Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors.
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Isn't this one of those "Duh" things? Who pays for this research when its common knowledge?
 
Ummm duh.

Researchers at the Ockie's Research Institute discovered that research costs money. - now I need my own news posting.
 
And researchers are now conducting a research to be able to try and find out more stuff they don't need to research.. so they can research it anyway and get paid for it with government grants (our tax dollars).
 
:( Man, now I just feel so inadequate with my one 28" Hanns-G :(

Well, I guess the only thing left to do now is buy a couple more... :p
 
tikicult said:
Isn't this one of those "Duh" things? Who pays for this research when its common knowledge?
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This research is very relevant and useful. To you this may be a duh but to businesses purchasing IT equipment they have no idea what kind of productivity boost larger monitors will get them, to them it just appears as an expense. By citing research like this you have evidence for conducting cost benefit analyses for purchasing equipment to show management why they should go with a more expensive product.
 
Icemastr said:
This research is very relevant and useful. To you this may be a duh but to businesses purchasing IT equipment they have no idea what kind of productivity boost larger monitors will get them, to them it just appears as an expense. By citing research like this you have evidence for conducting cost benefit analyses for purchasing equipment to show management why they should go with a more expensive product.
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exactly, because beancounters are douches
 
This just reminds me of a disappointment at work. :(

I started my current development job over a year ago. For some reason they wanted to buy me a new "good" PC. The PC I was using was already OK, but who am I to complain?

So there's a big build up on this great PC I was going to get, got a good deal on it, $2500, blah, blah, blah. The PC was relatively nice, a Dell Precision workstation with a Core 2 Xeon, ample memory, but a complete waste of money (the X-Fi and Quadro were pointless). I'm never getting a CPU for the second socket and the FBDIMM channels weren't even fully populated (i.e. running at 1/2 bandwidth).

The jewel to this $2500 PC was of course the 19" 1280x1024 monitor. If he would have asked, I would have recommended an Optiplex with a 20" or 24" LCD. I *really* dislike programming on less than a 1600x1200 monitor.
 
My son made the cover of [H]ardOCP!!!!!
1205453017luxZsDbd38_1_1.jpg


Actually kind of funny. Story about productivity, and you guys put a picture of my kids playing GTR. :D

All I can say is, I am glad I did not expense those monitor at work, or I would be in trouble.

Oh yeah, 3 monitors is definately more productive, and I find I am less tired at the end of the day.
 
Haven't there been a number of studies that show exactly the opposite, too? I seem to remember having read both sides of this coin in various different incarnations.

I think we can agree, however, that bigger monitors are conclusively more badass.
 
Definitely a Duh.

I am much more productive with a larger monitor, particularly with data processing in excel, sigma plot, etc.
 
can't argue with that logic. the whole widescreen bigger monitor boom really help me productivity wise (quad core did not hurt either to run everything at once)
 
Yes, I would agree. I have a 20" and 24" monitor which together give me a desktop size of 3520x1200.
I have a fullscreened compiler window on the 20", a terminal window, file transfer window, and small PDF window on the 24". Great for programming!
 
Sweet now im going to show this to my parents and see if they will buy me a nice 24incher (perfect size for me, dont really need anything bigger). Ill say it help me be more productive in my studies and turn my B's into A's:D

Sigh.....if only that would work.
 
programming is pretty awesome on dual displays... 19x12 and 12x10... eclipse or MS VS on the main, mysql and an api/reference on the other... sooooo much better without alt-tabbing
 
Almost all of the employees at my workplace now have dual monitors. I think it's dumb. You can only work on one thing at a time,.. if they could understand how to alt tab thatd work fine. Instead, we're just killing the planet some more.
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
Almost all of the employees at my workplace now have dual monitors. I think it's dumb. You can only work on one thing at a time,.. if they could understand how to alt tab thatd work fine. Instead, we're just killing the planet some more.
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I take it you've never used two monitors before, have you? Try it.


I've got a 19" and 17" right now and wouldn't give up the second monitor unless it was for a bigger one. I borrowed a couple of 22"'s over spring break though and that was incredible. Bigger screen + more screens = WIN.
 
Someone needs to tell my employer this, we still have 17" crt's everywhere and a few 17" lcds on the newer computers.
 
I wouldn't get anything done if I had multiple monitors. But then again I have no use for more than one, nor do I program or do anything that would benefit from them.

But I have seen how it makes things easier for a lot of people. It's almost night and day depending on the user. In my eyes an investment like that is worth it.
 
yahhh maybe thats why everyone here at work has atleast dual monitors... it just makes sense when you're in computers.
 
All of you with your 20" and 24" monitors are lightweights :p. You haven't gamed until you've done it on dual 30" monitors:



(FYI, I don't actually own two of these - the one on the left made a buzzing sound and was in the process of being sent back to Dell. I just couldn't help but take a photo.)
 
Oh, and by the way - the effective resolution of that setup was 5120x1600, or 8.2 million pixels.

That's equal to 3.6 24" 1920x1200 monitors, 4.6 22" 1680x1050 monitors, or 6.3 19" 1280x1024 monitors!

I couldn't figure out what to do with the space, and two 30" monitors take up a massive amount of desk space. I'm not too sad that I had to send one of them back to Dell.
 
I need more data like the screen resolutions used, font size etc,
using a 19" monitor at 1024x768 will drastically handicap a test, when you could use a 17" LCD at 1280x1024,
Were they using standard aspect ratio monitors or Wide screens?
my boss has been buying wide screens because they are cheap, but they are so wide they do not work well for programming. but for CAD, data processing and gaming they are great.

ymic said:
Someone needs to tell my employer this, we still have 17" crt's everywhere and a few 17" lcds on the newer computers.
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I handed my boss a price list for new LCD monitors, the power draw on the older 17-21" CRTs and the power usage on the new LCDs, it was almost one quarter the power draw, so the electric bill is much less.
 
I just got a 21" crt in addition to my 20.1" wide screen lcd. I'm loving the productivity!! I wish I had another graphics card to run a third!
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
Almost all of the employees at my workplace now have dual monitors. I think it's dumb. You can only work on one thing at a time,.. if they could understand how to alt tab thatd work fine. Instead, we're just killing the planet some more.
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You can only type in one at a time, but you watch 2 at a time. With dual screens you can have your email and such in one screen so that you can monitor incoming emails, while working in another. Or monitor any other type of program that you can just open on a screen and let sit there. Or if you need to work on one data sheets while looking at information from others you can pull up a window in one screen and reference it will working in the other without having to alt-tab back and forth, back and forth. It is much faster to look at a second screen while working than to alt-tab (or windows key - tab in vista). I have also used multiple screens to open up terminal connections and go back and forth between the remote machine and my machine without having to open and close the window to see if the server is finished running the process i started on it.


2 LCDs aren't going to kill the planet any more than the old CRT that you used for all those years.
 
Everything is rooting in the theory of limits as per Bell Curve. Too small = not enough productivity. Too big = not enough productivity. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot apparently?
 
I will settle for getting rid of my 17" to my girlfriend and getting a nice 24 for myself :)
 
GQCarrick said:
I will settle for getting rid of my 17" to my girlfriend and getting a nice 24 for myself :)
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That will never work....
oh wait girlfriend, when she becomes the wife, she will have to have the best hardware, or you will have to buy two to ensure you have one, if it appears better she will want it.... :D
 
There is an upper limit, however: Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen.
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Probably had more to do with resolution than size. Their entire study is flawed as the don't compare same sized monitors with different resolutions. Was is really the size that made them more productive or how many pixels they have to work with?
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
Instead, we're just killing the planet some more.
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Your car is likely a thousand times more "destructive" to the environment per minute operated than the largest desktop LCD display. Just throwing that out there :)
 
Sweet, I can present this article to my director. My dual 17" config here at work isn't l33t enough.
 
Exavior said:
You can only type in one at a time, but you watch 2 at a time. With dual screens you can have your email and such in one screen so that you can monitor incoming emails, while working in another. Or monitor any other type of program that you can just open on a screen and let sit there. Or if you need to work on one data sheets while looking at information from others you can pull up a window in one screen and reference it will working in the other without having to alt-tab back and forth, back and forth. It is much faster to look at a second screen while working than to alt-tab (or windows key - tab in vista). I have also used multiple screens to open up terminal connections and go back and forth between the remote machine and my machine without having to open and close the window to see if the server is finished running the process i started on it.


2 LCDs aren't going to kill the planet any more than the old CRT that you used for all those years.
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If you size your windows reasonably, you can accomplish this on one monitor. There's no need for "alt-tabbing". Not to mention that Outlook uses notifications that alert you when you have a new email message.
 
8fingers said:
I take it you've never used two monitors before, have you? Try it.


I've got a 19" and 17" right now and wouldn't give up the second monitor unless it was for a bigger one. I borrowed a couple of 22"'s over spring break though and that was incredible. Bigger screen + more screens = WIN.
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The irony is I have dual hyundai Imagequest 19's at home, and use a combination of 4 monitors at work.

At home, I originally purchased the 2nd to use in dual monitor configuration. It quickly lost its' appeal when I discovered I couldn't game and still use a normal windows desktop on the other monitor. I thought well okay, I can use this so I can watch movies on one monitor and do something on the other. But, your eyes can only be one place at a time. So when I did that I pretty much ended up not watching the movie. Now the 2nd monitor is attached to a 2nd pc.

At work, desk A has 1 17" monitor on a KVM that switches between a mac-mini and my workstation unit. All I really do here is simple websurfing/emaill/helpdesk and remoting into servers and user systems. Desk B has a G5 with two apple 20 somes displays (Not sure what they are off the top of my head, 23's?) I inherited them from a "designer" and use it primarily to create templates in Quark Xpress. I then have a windows box up there as well just so I have one with me if I need it with a 17" directly attached.

All of our Customer Service reps have dual monitors (as well as our preproduction users, designers, and soon our sales reps). They use Microsoft CRM, Outlook, Excel, and a dos-based program called dataflex, and that's pretty much it. You take the initial cost of the monitors, the dedicated video cards to support them, the manpower of time req'd to install all of them, the added electricity cost to run them, and I assure you we're not gaining anything back in terms of productivity to make it a viable solution.

I have a dilbert strip on one of my walls that likens the situation..
Guy: My pay is below market, can I have a 20% raise?
Boss: No, but I'll let you use two flat screen monitors in your cubicle so it feels like you're an evil genius in a secret lair.
(Loud Evil Laughter comes from cubicle)
Guy 2: Who got a second monitor?!
 
I think some students are just trying to get bigger monitors in the computer lab.

Can't blame them :)
 
bsoft said:
All of you with your 20" and 24" monitors are lightweights :p. You haven't gamed until you've done it on dual 30" monitors:



(FYI, I don't actually own two of these - the one on the left made a buzzing sound and was in the process of being sent back to Dell. I just couldn't help but take a photo.)
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lol WoW FTW
 
bsoft said:
All of you with your 20" and 24" monitors are lightweights :p. You haven't gamed until you've done it on dual 30" monitors:



(FYI, I don't actually own two of these - the one on the left made a buzzing sound and was in the process of being sent back to Dell. I just couldn't help but take a photo.)
Click to expand...

lol WoW FTW
and yes SIZE does matter
 
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