To those banging on the “use virtual desktops” drum, consider a simple scenario where multiple monitors works.
Suppose you are writing code and you need to see the documentation for a function that takes complicated parameters (think structures with bitfield members, so you need a few documentation pages to work with).
With multiple monitors, you put the documentation on an auxiliary monitor(s) and stack windows so that you can see each one; you spend a one-time window management cost then get your work done.
With a single, large monitor, you have to resize your code window and all documentation windows in the hopes that you can find a configuration that lets you see everything you need. If this doesn’t work, you need to Alt+Tab between windows occasionally as the information you need has been covered by a different window. You pay the window management cost many times, and might even resort to printing the documentation and putting it in a document holder, thus simulating multiple monitors and wasting paper.
Virtual desktops make it no better. If you stack the documentation on a secondary virtual desktop, you still have to switch away from the code editor desktop to see the documentation, then switch back. You still can’t put more information on the screen at the same time, which is the goal of multiple monitors.
Multi-monitor has been invaluable to me for ages. My current job won’t let me go to 3 monitors, but for most of my work, the third monitor wasn’t really doing much, unless I was running Notepad++ for some random text output.
Just to reinforce what others have said, having Visual Studio up in one monitor and SQL Server Express Studio/Web Browser open in the other while debugging is simply priceless. I would go batty having to minimize switch things out.
I also use virtual desktops. When I get an e-mail to deal with an existing app that has frequent bugs, I hate having to minimize/close/move my existing work to accomodate, so I just jump over to Desktop 4 (my “extra one”) move the window with the e-mail message to that desktop, fire up another copy of my needed tools and resolve the issue.
I use Dexpot (http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en) to handle all of my needs. In addition to the virtual desktop option (with hot keys to move windows and swap desktops) it also has a few built in tools like rolling up windows and minimizing them to the tray. There are plenty of hot keys to merge with all of this. Granted the application hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, but I haven’t found this much functionality in a free app yet.
Nowadays, I think I have very little “lag time” when I get work done and I love it. Long live multiple monitors, virtual desktops, and hotkey/launchers!
I’d like to add my 2c if I could. I went from a dual display (21"w+19"w) to a single 40"w display and I must say that there is much more difficulty in researching while coding (be it msdn or a technical article describing an algorithm that I am to translate to code). I sure do miss my dual monitor setup.
Not that a 40" display doesn’t have its benefits (read: larger than life CS and WoW)
I do a lot of coding and a lot of Photoshopping. For both having 2 monitors is a must. I’ve worked on at least 2 displays for many years now and at one point had 3 setup, but as someone mentioned - the third didn’t do much but look cool.
For web coding, having one screen for code and one screen for browser is invaluable for time. But for Photoshopping, I sometimes find even 2 monitors isn’t enough space.
When you have lots of files open and need to spread them out, it gets pretty cramped, even spanning two monitors. I’m not sure a third screen would make it easier, however. I would almost favor a 2 screen setup with just bigger monitors. Here at work I’m on a 19" set - moving up to 22" or more with two would be insane. I can’t say it’d speed up productivity all that much, but it would be far more convenient.
now explain why the whole world uses landscape mode.
i use 2 24" LCD’s in PORTRAIT MODE and nothing beats it.
code, prose, the web: all portrait mode.
but go ahead, waste the margin and give up context.
My hints:
1)Rotate one of the monitors to portrait mode, especially with the new LCDs with the wider aspect ratio. May not be aesthetically balanced but it’s a heckuva lot more useful.
Documents, eMail? Portrait.
Spreadsheets, PowerPoint? Landscape.
2) Position the monitors as close as physically possible, not two feet away from each other. Laptop users - grab a phone book to elevate the laptop to the monitor height if necessary.
3) Don’t forget Windows allows you to “position” the monitors so the logical position matches the physical position when they are different sizes or resolutions (e.g. I keep the bottoms of both monitors aligned). I’m amazed how many people don’t bother with this simple trick and their mouse ‘jumps’ all over the place.
Morons who claim no productivity gains from multiple screens –
Have you ever actually used (like, for many months/years) multiple LCDs?
I don’t know how a programmer could go from multi-LCD setup to single display not claim some, even if minor, productivity dropoff.
If you can’t afford it or if you feel bad b/c your company won’t drop the $$$ for multi-lcds, fine. Just say so. But it’s probably worth the $$$, from a personal corporate perspective.
I run a 19’’ wide and my Macbook Pro (both 1440x900) and it’s great. People who says that this does not increase productivity is because they don’t code
Obviously you cannot look at both at the same time, but it is way faster to move your eyes then to press alt-tab, find the IM window (or whatever you need), release alt-tab, then press again to return to where you were. And if you happen to need to this very often you’re waiting time. Virtual Desktops (Spaces in Mac OS X) help with this, but it’s not the same, I’ve tried to use only one screen and move across “spaces” but the multi-screen is still better for coders.
On the other hand no Window Manager (at least Windows, OSX and KDE/GNOME/ETC) don’t do a very good job organizing stuff. Mac OS X “Maximize” is not a panacea and very often you have to manually adjust the window. Windows does the same, but instead uses the safe approach: use all the screen. This sometimes ends up being a waste.
The truth is that if you use Visual Studio, Multi-monitor is much better (unless you have a 26++ inch screen, where you could leave everything open, but even then, having your running application AND the debugging code may not fit).
Jeff, I also am a true believer. 3 at work, 3 at home. My 3 at home are the superior ones, and I paid for those out of my pocket.
I’m still waiting for the study that states it so simply that even the bosses will find the argument compelling. It would go like this: productivity gain to go to 3 monitors from 1 is X, and cost to do so is Y. So for a desired payback/rate of return on investment of Z%, your employee in question has to be worth Q dollars an hour or more to make the upgrade obviously worthwhile.
Actual numbers applied to the above logic would make productivity gains of as little as 10% a laughably easy investment. 10% on a $60k employee is a $6k/yr savings. At $500 an upgrade, you’d get your full upgrade costs back in savings in about 1 month. Slam dunk.
But it has to be in a STUDY. If the numbers come from a BELIEVER, we’re just making them up…
I’m sitting in front of my 2 19" widescreen monitors right now. I’m personally a big fan of the dual-monitor scenario for a number of reasons. to illustrate this fact I’ll give concrete examples.
I’m a gamer. so being able to have an FAQ or my AIM buddy list, or my media player be on the other monitor is convenient. after i die and i have to wait for a respawn or whatever, i can take a quick glance over and see what is going on. and I can also keep track of what music I’m listening to.
I’m a programmer. I’m studying computer engineering so I’m getting my fair share of programming done, nothing is nicer than being able to open up a few instances of puTTY on my main monitor and have firefox display my instructors spec for the program on the second monitor, and it’s not a distraction, when something isn’t clear to me I simply turn my head and see what the spec says.
I’m a multi-tasker. I’m the guy who leaves firefox open with a few tabs, is logged on AIM and xfire, always has a music player open, and still needs to get stuff done. if I’m surfing the web and someone IM’s me, it’s on my second monitor, out of the way until I can get to it. if I wanna see what songs are coming up in my playlist, or I wanna change playlists, I mouse over the border and change it quick.
once I sit down to do a certain task on my computer I open up the windows I need, get them situated and thats it. no more fussing around, alt-tabbing, trying to remember what the program spec said. It just gets done. so more is more. and if you still don’t think it’s good to have a second monitor for programming, how about having javadocs on its own monitor? or a C reference? or anything for that matter. you could put up some interfaces you need to implement, anything really.
I personally find that in my case having a second monitor is ALWAYS more convenient and increases productivity.
This is a personal choice thing. I am a big evangelist of at least two monitors. I always show laptop users how to configure their system to use both monitors. What I find interesting is when people have 5 windows open on one screen and nothing on the other. I ask people about it and they are to “busy” to move their windows to a different screen. But will spend endless accumulated hours "Alt_Tab"ing around hunting for one particular window. I love a two monitor setup and using MaxiVision was using 3 for a while. Unfortunately Excel didn’t like to play nice with MaxiVision and I spend 90% of my working day in Excel so I quit using it. I have dual monitors at home running off a dual head Nvidia card, and dual monitors at work, running off my laptop. The pixel size difference is annoying, and occasionally trying to move between is a pain if they aren’t lined up properly but for the most part I love the flexibility and have seen a marked improvement in my productivity. Now I need to buy a couple modern sized screens.
I use multiple monitors (2x20" LCDs) with virtual desktops (Virtual Dimension) on Win XP – there’s no way I can go back. I use the two monitors to separate similar tasks (code on one screen, requirements/design description on other) and the separate virtual desktops to separate different tasks (remote desktop to a build machine, work-in-progress documents, etc.).
Perhaps the problem is the window manager? I’ve found that I’m most productive when I don’t have to deal with managing windows and I can see everything on the screen. Hence I’ve used xmonad ion (x11 window managers) which allows me to tile/tab my windows. In my mac/windows environments I spend way too much time resizing, reorganizing, and flipping through virtual desktops.
I like xmonad especially because my virtual desktops are per screen resolution. Hence I can map my 9 virtual desktops between my two monitors any way I want. This is even more useful when I dedicate a virtual desktop per task allowing me to switch to the right task. for example, I have 1 full screen e-mail desktop, I full screen chat desktop, 1 full screen web desktop, 1 full screen documentation (web browser) desktop, 3 full screen vim (code) desktops, 1 full screen terminal (building) desktop, 1 full screen testing desktop. No more dealing with windows once I launch my apps.
If I need more for my task at hand I can introduce a new window which will split the screen or add a new tab for the full screen window. Another benefit is that I can focus on the task at hand- I don’t have popups for every new bit of e-mail, IM conversation, etc. I don’t see things bouncing around at the corner of my eye. I just see my vim window and terminal. When I need to read bug reports review code, I have my browser and e-mail desktops side by side. When I’m relaxing I have my chat window and browser side by side.
I’ve built an adapter that amplifies the signals coming out of my DVI port and converts it to varying levels of electric shock that are applied to a warehouse full of monkeys, each carrying a red, green, and blue dry-erase marker, that I have organized onto a 1920x1200 array against a ginormous whiteboard.
Personally, I have 2 monitors and 2 PCs linked with Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/). When my mouse leaves the lefthand side of the screen of my Windows XP box it seamlessly moves over to my Solaris box next to it.
The best thing about synergy, apart from sharing mouse/keyboard across unrelated OSes and boxes, is that the clipboard is carried around with the cursor.
I can run a something on the Solaris box, copy it and paste it on my XP box without even thinking about it.
When debugging through client(winform/website) / server(webservice/db and other)-scenarios I find it as a big mess when using only one monitor.
If I have breakpoints in the webservice and in some external DLL and in the client that is consuming the webservice and using only one monitor and a break occur it takes some time to find out what app that popped up, I have to to read windows titles and somtimes some code before knowing what application that breaked.
I allways have 2 monitors and run the client on the left monitor and server on the right. That way its a direct link in the brain when the right IDE pops up on an break, left=client, right=server. And I can step through the code in the clientwindow to the left, continue automagically on the right side when I do server calls…
You cannot get that clear, overall view with only one monitor or with virtual desktops.
Whether on Linux, Windows or OS X I’ve been using some sort of desktop manager since I discovered their existence in college (on some RedHat distro).
But, recently I switched over to using 2 monitors: a 20 inch display + my MacBook’s screen. Previously I ran 4 desktops and each had a specific role: 1) terminal, 2) IDE, 3) browser window dedicated to what I’m working on 4) more browser windows for non-work browsing, email and IM.
FWIW I find that I was more productive using a Desktop manager. For me the difference is the fact that desktop managers all have customizable hot keys for switching between desktops and I got very quick with this sort of setup.
I’m not quite as quick at switching between “views” using Alt (or Apple Key) + tab. I usually have 5 - 10 apps running at any given time so with ALT+Tab I could be many keystrokes away from a particular view whereas with multiple desktops I have a known destination (ex: i always have my mail on desktop 4). So, for me, switching desktops (especially with a 2D grid of desktops) is way quicker.
Also - on a Mac you Command+Tab to an app - not a particular window of the app. This also slows me down a bit cuz at that point you may have to use Command+`to scroll through windows.
Spaces on Leopard pisses me off b/c if you Command+Tab you’ll switch to another desktop exposing the app you just switched to. I have a love hate relationship with this feature. Sometimes I wish it would just activate that app (w/o switching desktops) at which point I could do a quick Command+N to spawn a new window on the desktop I’m currently at. Like I said - this is a love hate thing.
But having my terminal (with tail -f on a few log files) on my laptop screen while having an IDE maximized on my main display is pretty nice. Right now this convenience is stop me from switching back to just a desktop manager. I’m trying to get used to combining the solutions but for some reason switching desktops while running an external display is way too sluggish for constant use (im blaming the macbook’s video card).
