Bigger Computer Monitors = More Productivity

[bfellow]

Would you choose a 15" LCD flat-panel monitor or a gigantic 30" CRT monitor?

 

[Boozer]

I recently realised this higher productivity business. I've been using Maya 2008 and 3ds Max on my 22" Dell WS monitor. Everything seemed cramped it just wasnt working for me. I had one of those "you dumbshit" moments when I looked at the 42" Westinghouse that was literally kissing the Dell monitor. Now I have this huge screen of the Maya UI in front of me and its great.

 

[Exavior]

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.

Depends on your screen size and resolution. On a 17" or 19" screen with 1024x768 or lower, it would be hard to size them correctly to get a good enough view of the data. Even at 1280x1024 on a 19" i find it hard sometimes to size stuff good enough for me to open multiple windows in one screen to be able to work in them. As for outlook, that is only for things going directly into your inbox. If you setup folders and have rules put the mail into various folders it doesn't notifiy you. However you can create alerts for that, however i myself wouldn't want alerts poping up in the middle of my screen for each and every email i get.

I actually only use one screen, but that is just because I don't have the room on my desk for a second one.

Now based on what you listed as what your companies uses then now it probably really isn't needed there. But at places where they normally work in multiple programs at once it is a great help. There are people at my work that they start the day by opening up about we have people that start their morning by opening up their email program, a few spread sheets, 2 or 3 web sites, and a few telnet connections. Some have a lot more open than that all day. So i could see where two screens probably could help some of them out especially when they are going back and forth between two or three programs. But it all depends on where you work, how big your screens are and what resoltuion is.

 

[MrGuvernment]

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.

i think if you have "too much" it could be counter productive, but if anyone who is used to using multiple monitors, it is far more because you dont need to contstantly minimize and look for windwos in your tasbar and crap, ti is just there

when i first got dual 19' CRT's i always used the one monitor more and forgot about the other, or i would open too many things and get lost looking for things.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I'd kill for a dual monitor setup here at work. It would make things a hell of a lot quicker and easier for me. I need resolution as well as dual monitors. To me, 1280x1024 or similar on a 17" monitor is too small if I'm buying. Then again, I wouldn't buy anything smaller than a 22" right now.

At one point I had two computers and two monitors on my desk at home. One monitor for each. It came in handy and it was really nice, but most of the stuff I did was on my main system. Most of what I was doing with the second system could have been done on the main system with two monitors. I decided to put the second monitor on my main system and just VNC'd into the second system as needed. I now had a 19" CRT@1600x1200 for my main display and a 17" CRT@1280x1024 for my secondary. I found it was a hell of a lot easier to get stuff done this way.

With multiple displays, I no longer had to ALT-TAB all over the place or try and search through 30 items in the task bar. I use dual desktops in Linux which means each monitor has its own desktop, taskbar, menu, everything. While I can't move programs from one monitor to the other, I can start up something on the monitor I want it on. I setup my main monitor to use everything. On the secondary monitor, I set up the desktop there to make it easy for me to start up and use software specifically for that monitor so I don't have to run it on my main. I keep all my monitoring programs on the secondary. Quick glance tells me what I want to know. I also keep less used programs or less important programs running on it (Thunderbird, Sunbird, IM client, F@H consoles, Xchat, Gkrellm and some other things). This frees up my main display for any other tasks and keeps the desktop "cleaner" for ease of use.

Currently my main display is a 24" LCD@1920x1200 and my secondary is a 19" CRT@1600x1200. I am able to keep a lot of information in plain sight at the same time with a setup like this. A quick glance to the side tells me the status of my system, if I have any new mail, who is logged onto different IM programs, if anything has happened on IRC and the status of all my folding clients. I get all of that from a quick glance. It's going to take a lot more time than a quick glance to get all that information off of one monitor while you're in the middle of doing something else.

At work I use several different applications at once and need to look back and forth between them. Sometimes I need to look at more than one account at a time. On a single display, this is a severe pain in the ass. I know because I've had to do it this way for years. 17"@1280x1024 does not give you much room to work with. It only seems to get worse as I buy new monitors for home use. I haven't used a resolution of less than 1600x1200 on my main display for 7 years. That was a 19" CRT. I've now moved up to 1920x1200 on a 24" display (lower res than I care for on this size of display but I needed a new one and got a good deal).

When you're used to higher res and more displays, you get slowed down a lot when you aren't able to use a setup like that.

 

[Cryptic1911]

I have dual 20" lcd's here on my MacPro, and at work I have a quad lcd setup. its nothing high tech, but I have a 20" as the main, 17"'s on the right and left, and a 15" on top of the 20". I have shells into our two aix boxes on the left and right running system monitoring software, the center I have my email, internet, and anything i'm actively working on, and the top 15" has an mmc console into active directory and I keep my itunes and random folders up there.

I don't "need" 4 monitors, I just had the stuff and figured I'd use it.. its awesome, but I find the biggest gain is going from a single to dual monitors. anything after that and its just cool and handy to have, but its not like OMG THIS RULES like when you go from a single to dual

 

[DemonDiablo]

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.

I'm sorry I dont usually curse on forum boards but I really have to get my point across on this one.

You're a fucking idiot.

 

[DemonDiablo]

Oh yea and I got 4 monitors at my job.

 

[MooCow]

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.

Did you try it yourself? Did you know you could move your mouse across both screens?

Nevermind, you're too stupid to understand. YOU SUCK.

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

2 LCDs aren't going to kill the planet any more than the old CRT that you used for all those years.

Not to mention the power consumption of say two 22` samsung monitors 55 watts x 2 equals the same for one 21` CRT monitor.

 

[Deleted member 108676]

I agree. We just got dual monitors at work and it makes the Excel/Powerpoint things much easier.

 

[Oh4Sh0]

Did you try it yourself? Did you know you could move your mouse across both screens?

Nevermind, you're too stupid to understand. YOU SUCK.

I see, apparently I am stupid. Apparently I didn't make another post indicating I have/had a dual monitor at home and use dual monitors for an OSX system at work. Good job.

 

[Oh4Sh0]

Not to mention the power consumption of say two 22` samsung monitors 55 watts x 2 equals the same for one 21` CRT monitor.

A. I don't know why we're comparing these to old crts. People use LCDs now. Using two doubles the power requirements. Even if it's comparable to an older setup, it still requires double the power draw of one monitor.

And we're not talking about one monitor, we're talking about business sense. This is large scale. For instance, for the company I work for, there's probably about 50 dual monitor systems. So multiply that 55w x 50.

 

[Oh4Sh0]

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

Everyone is hating on my opinion of our workplace environment. I'm not saying it may not serve a purpose elsewhere and could be useful and efficient.
And again, going back to the previous post, we're not talking about "one additional" monitor here.

 

[buffbiff21]

I know which one I'd take.

Tough to say in this one though.

 

[jjager85]

just another reason to give people at work more screen space plus better computers so they can play games while at the same time doing work on the other. lol

 

[Ockie]

I know which one I'd take.

Tough to say in this one though.

If the smaller one has a higher resolution, i'd take the smaller one. Screen size does not play a productivity role when the resolution is lower than that of a smaller monitor

 

[buffbiff21]

If the smaller one has a higher resolution, i'd take the smaller one. Screen size does not play a productivity role when the resolution is lower than that of a smaller monitor

The big ones are 1080p which IMO is perfect for a monitor.

 

[Oh4Sh0]

I did lol @ the remote stack