I would definitely have problems trying to code without 2 monitors these days. I now have 2 x 20inch displays at home as well as at work, and since we introduced them in development two years ago, every other department has them, so management has to be congratulated on being able to see the productivity gains.
Odd that you spent time resizing windows Jeff. Is that because you have such big monitors though? I never resize a window since I’m on a laptop and things are either maximised or left at the same size. I don’t mind lots of ALT+TAB as that feels fluent.
What I would like to see you focus on, next time you blog about multiple monitors, is how this affects all the ‘health and safety’ aspects like neck-strain and seat position…surely with 3 monitors your neck must be on the go all day, like you’re at a tennis match?! Whereas with one monitor you keep your head pretty still. Do you notice the difference in your muscles?
“More usable desktop space reduces the amount of time you spend on window management excise. Instead of incessantly dragging, sizing, minimizing and maximizing windows[…]”
No! It just replaces it with another way of slowing you down. Instead of either resizing windows to tile them, you deal with having to move the mouse twice the distance, constantly turning your head to multiple screens (assuming you actually use the extra monitors, not just having stuff open “incase you need to quickly glance at it”), having to deal with applications that don’t work nicely with dual screens (windows opening centered across both screens, half on each monitors)
The only particularly useful thing about multiple monitors is being able to have multiple things on screen at once, but I find having two things I’m looking at on difference screens slower than having them next to each other. When I had two monitors on my home computer, I ended up shoving download progresses, system monitors and other stuffs I could have easily just minimized.
There are times a second monitor is useful (nearly all my works machines are dual-monitors - one TFT and one calibrated CRT), but I can easily do without.
Yeh, the research may say you are more productive with multiple monitors. It also says your more productive with a single, bigger screen. And a smaller one. And I’m sure you could find the research to prove using multiple monitors makes you a communist if you look hard enough - it seems like there’s research to prove everything is everything…
Yeah, people with three monitors never have to work out after work. 
I run with two 20" widescreen Dell LCDs, both at home and at work. I generally have a couple of instances of Visual Studio maximised on the left-hand one, and Outlook, Thunderbird, RSS Bandit and the MSDN viewer maximised on the right-hand one. SQL Server Management Studio doesn’t live on a particular screen.
It’s like my left-hand screen is my “do work” screen, and my right-hand screen is my “look stuff up” screen.
I also totally recommend UltraMon. The extra taskbar and the “move to next monitor” button are totally worth the money.
The next step, of course, is to persuade work to get me a third monitor. I don’t see any studies about the relative productivity levels of 2 monitors versus 3, though.
I used to have two 20 inch monitors. Recently I bought myself a 24 inch widescreen monitor. The plan was to place the 24 inch between the two 20 inches. After a couple of weeks of that configuration I noticed that I was hardly using the two 20 inches at all. I’ve since removed them from my desk and placed them in storage.
I think there is a point where more is no longer better. I find the 24 inch monitor is enough space for most of my day to day tasks. There are occasions when I wish I had my two 20 inch monitors back (for example, comparing two spreadsheets side-by-side), but they occur so infrequently that I’m not tempted to return to that configuration.
I’m all for the magical number 7 (plus or minus 2) (from Miller, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)
When you have more than a number of apps open at the same time, your productivity will drop. It’s far better to concentrate on a small number of tasks and get those done. As Joel Spolsky described (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html), programmers cannot multitask (without taking a performance hit).
Having more monitor real estate is better to get things done, probably up to the limit described, but having too much will have the opposite effect. I think the way to go is to do a ruthless redux of all excessive apps. For instance, at this moment, I have five open Tabs in Firefox, one in IE7, three open Excel Workbooks, one open Access DB, Outlook and one Windows Explorer. Total apps: 6.
Enough already. Sometimes I’ll have fifteen to twenty windows opened, and then I’ll close some just to keep focused.
For example, I could close Access, as I’m doing things in Excel at this point, or I could close two Excel workbooks and finish what I was doing in Access. And really, I should be working and not writing in Firefox.
So, I’ll leave you with this. Having too much visual real estate is too much. More is not unlimitedly more.
I use two monitors at work, and I certainly found my productivity while programming is certainly increased. I use the main monitor in front of me for Visual Studio and my secondary monitor for internet / google / msdn, or if I have to examine data while I code the secondary screen will contain the data.
I think of it like this. Its the same as having one sheet of paper to right on and another to read from. if the one you were reading from was stapled below / or above the one your writing on you spend more time flicking between the two physically, lifting the paper, reading try to remember, form something to write, bring back writing paper, try to remember what you were about to write.
Compared to having the piece of paper your reading from beside the piece of paper your writing on, you don’t get taken out the flow so much as you just swivel your head, have a quick read and continue writing.
I think one of the factors that may be frequently overlooked in these productivity surveys is reduced printing costs.
It took me a while to convince my boss to take one of the cheap monitor and graphic card combos we had and slap them onto my machine. With just those added to my machine, there was such a significant drop in the amount of stuff I had to print–because it was RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN–that my productivity soared.
Like many developers, I’m nowhere near the printer, and the documents I want to print are frequently large, including hefty graphics. Not having to print that stuff anymore means I can stay at my desk, and keep working.
For me, it’s about keeping my arse planted in the chair where I get my work done, not treading a hole in the carpet between myself and the printer. It also reduces toner, ink, and paper costs. I wonder how many of these studies are factoring that in. Because believe me, my boss noticed, and knew right away that he got a major return on his investment in very short order.
How come I’m always getting your posts a day late and 100 comments deep? - This is after clearing the cache and hitting refresh countless times… ugh… bottom of the barrel I am.
At my company, it’s funny to me… those offices and cubicles I notice with = 2 monitors are typically developers… and those with 2 are typically systems admins/engineers. This is only my opinion of what I see… bare in mind.
I spend a lot of my time at the moment programming using a development environment, SQL Server Management Sudio, Excel and Visio.
At work, we have a large 24" widescreen primary monitor and a 19" second monitor.
Most of the time I telecommute, where I have just one 19" monitor.
Until you compare these two methods of working, you simply won’t understand how much more productive it can be to have your primary with your development environment, and secondary with your reference materials (excel, visio, SQL server).
When at home, I am constantly flicking between applications, writing stuff down, copy/pasting if possible just to get the info I need. All of this is eliminated by having just two monitors. I can easily see having 2 monitors increasing productivity by 50%.
I don’t know. Most of the time I spend programming is done thinking, so the computer (including monitor(s)) doesn’t really matter that much.
I think that one thing that gets overlooked is that screen size (in inches) doesn’t necessarily correlate w/ desktop real estate (resolution). For example I am currently using my PC as a media center so I have a 32" aquos hooked up to it… 32" might sound nice (its actually way too big (again in inches)) but its resolution caps out at 1366x768 which is pretty limiting and certainly LESS desktop real estate than a 22" lcd that offers 1900x1200.
Just remember, screen size and desktop size are not one in the same!
Dual 20" at work, actually three of them but the third is on a second box. All flat LCDs so that I get more real desktop space back. Like someone else above, I tend to have my Visual Studio instances running on one monitor and things that I mostly look at or interact with minimally on my right (dbgview, help, mantis, etc.). That setup works well for my brain and I like to have my VS instances maximized on one screen. I think I’m more productive with this setup but it is also just darn convenient to glance rather than to navigate through a windows stack each time I need to get to something.
My boxes are on a shelf above the monitors so the floor is clear - and I like that because having legroom is probably more important to me than having more screen real estate.
I use 7 screens on 3 machines (machines hooked together using Synergy, a mouse/keyboard sharing tool).
I have 2 computers I normally use at work. 1 (laptop) is the “corporate” platform, and 1 (beefier desktop) is an unencumbered one for development.
Each has 2 displays, although I use the laptop display for 1 of them. I use Synergy (http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/) to share the keyboard, mouse, and (text) clipboard.
True - very rarely do I use all at once. Many jobs focus on one system or the other.
The usefulness of multiple screens is (no surprise) dependent on what job is being done. To say multiple monitors is (or is not) without saying for what job is not totally useful. Many parts of my job don’t even need 2. But some benefit from 4.
My extra monitors take place of paper that used to be strewn about the desk - reference materials, notes, documentation, etc. All that stuff that is now NOT paper.
Seeing the application running, and the code executing at the same time is wonderful.
I find it interesting that even the linux guy up top didn’t mention alternative ways of managing windows. Any quality programmer-oriented editor will be able to manage multiple open files, even VS has that. I find a 22" widescreen monitor to be just fine. I have a browser on one side, a terminal, or debugger, on the other side towards the top of the screen, and an editor, usualy emacs, below it. That is all I need as a programmer, in fact I frequently just ssh in from home.
-I find I can only use multiple desktops(ie virtual screens) when I have multiple independent tasks going on at the same time. When I am programming I need everything at a glance, no technical mumbo jumbo.
-As some other people mention sometimes even the separation between monitors is too much of a disturbance. For me, I start seeing diminishing returns with larger monitors around 23" widescreen. Larger than that and I have to change my focus too often.
-To me the main benefit of mulitple monitors is the health benefit. If you stare at the screen too much your eyes go bad. You need to keep them moving, and refocusing. I especially need the benfit because I already have pretty bad eye sight.
@TuffGuy
There’s a freeware named VirtualWin doing almost the same thing for windows.
I’ve been through various configurations (multiple smaller displays, 1920x1200 display, currently provided with and using 4x19" lcds at work) and am starting to question this mode of thought now.
We have a natural field of vision of around 16:10, similar to a single widescreen. when you make this wider by adding more monitors (say 1 to each side) you destroy this fixed field of vision and introduce a lot more horizontal movement. my central 2 lcds at work are great (I’d still prefer a central single 24") but the ones to the far left/right are on the verge of being useless, they’re just too far away and require some substantial head swinging. they’re okay as sort of stand-by displays (I use them for outlook, remote desktop etc) but the utility of of extra displays is destroyed once you go past 3 displays (or 1 large one). more is no longer more.
in visual studio I’d welcome the extra height of a 30" LCD, whereas on 3x20" (for example) I’d just end up with a lot of wasted horizontal real estate even with documentation open in another window (readability of documentation on a screen that wide is another issue altogether).
the key benefit really is when you’re reading from one screen and writing to another. you clearly benefit from 2 displays in that case. but even in that case for some it might be faster to actually alt-tab than to twist their neck to see the other display (again, depends on display size and distance from screen).
despite all this thinking/analysis I’d like to say I still do some of my best work my 1024x768 resolution notebook, and am starting to lean towards thinking of the whole multimonitor issue (and even large monitor issue) as futile exercise of sorts. don’t get me wrong - i’m not making an outright assumption that it’s a bad thing here, just starting to really not see much benefit in the idea of more “real estate” lending to productivity. it might give you more space to put stuff but that doesn’t equate to a more intelligent solution or a new idea. for example it wouldn’t be out of line really to have some kid somewhere a kid on an 800x480 asus eee code out the next facebook without knowing anything about resolutions. you don’t need as much firepower for this stuff as the people trying to sell you it would like you believe, i think. it reminds me of the whole graphics card market situation where they’re selling stuff for quite literally a 150 times the cost (integrated $4 graphics vs $600 graphics) which people are willing to pay up to, heck, even buying multiples of the things, and the end result isn’t much different (if not worse due to all the distractions provided by the newfound hobby!).
whatever works. i’m sure you and al core will stick with your desktops, and for all i know i’ll change my mind again next year and be using a 9-monitor display grid to, um, well, let me go and find a use…
I think this may be one of those cases in which scientific results don’t capture the whole story.
If you’re going to time a person performing tasks with one monitor and then with two, you wont see a huge productivity difference. But if you then ask them, after they’ve completed the tasks, how enjoyable they found it, multiple monitors will win every time.
Multiple monitors means less frustration which means happier people which means better work in possibly less time. Of course, I have no proof, I’m just saying.