At Gizmodo, many of us are fans of the multi-monitor set-up. It’s not surprising: it lets us simultaneously keep an eye on breaking news, email our writing and graphics, too. But is there a limit to how useful multiple monitors can be?
The New York Times reports that use of more than one monitor is spreading. No longer is it the domain of the engineer, the programmer and the online gamer. No, bankers, journalists and anybody else who multitasks at a computer is getting on board, too. I use two at home, with one being used for writing and email, the other for Gimp, Twitter and news feeds. It works well.
And there’s proof it works, too. Kind of. Speaking to the New York Times, Professor James A. Anderson discussed some research he conducted into how productivity increases with number of monitors. Admittedly, the project was funded by NEC, but he claims that didn’t influence work. Let’s believe him, just this once. The results? Using more monitors cuts down on toggling time among windows on a single screen, uh, as you’d expect. Anderson has calculated that it can save about 10 seconds for every five minutes of work if you have a dual-monitor set-up. Over the course of an eight-hour day, that’s a saving of, oooh, 15 minutes.
Anderson says he uses three monitors himself. Above that, though, he says it’s hard to generalise about whether more monitors are better. But now monitors are cheaper, there’s no reason people can’t rock a four-display or six-display desk. So I guess at that point, seeing as science isn’t helping us, it’s over to you guys. Is less ever more? [New York Times]
Image: Ginnerobot
wsDK_II
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 7:43 AMmy two monitors save a hell of a lot more then 15 min a day. i probably am 30% more productive.
if i have a third monitor i would probably be another 10% more productive
Nytrojen
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 7:50 AMI’ll attest to that – been using a triple monitor setup now for about 6 years and it feels so constricting using any less
Sicarius123
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:21 AMI would not accept an IT Support job in an area that didn’t use at least two monitors. It would show an under-funded department who don’t care much about their employees ease of use.
Pickledfishlips
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:31 AMYes, love it.. but there’s definitely limits. Having used a 3×30 (7680×1600) setup for a while now I recently started turning off one monitor unless gaming. There’s just so much desk I used to constantly loose crap somewhere with too many things open. It’s like having a really big office desk, you just naturally accrue more stuff to put on it. Plus talk about the heat! Big panels generate a lot of thermal energy.
AudioGeek
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:47 AMDoing sound design, I love 3 monitors, when working on games, 2 for my software and 1 for the game. Although i’m pretty contempt with a 27in iMac at the moment hehe!!
splintex
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:25 AMYeah, I also hold apple in contempt. ;)
kdog
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:54 AMI love multi monitor use, but is there a gap out there for managing area less than a full screen? I use WinSplit to manage moving windows around on and across screens but this should be part and parcel of the OS. The ability to define “frames” and pre-set apps to frames and then switch between frames is pretty fundamental when you are multi-tasking.
yrrnn
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:32 AMOnce you go multi, you can’t go back. I’ve just started a new job and currently only have one monitor, which makes me sad.
For those who need to have many windows open at any given time on multiple screens, Win+arrow keys are incredibly useful.
olly
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 10:19 AMThanks for the tip about the Win+arrow keys. Can’t believe I didn’t know about that!
ADP
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:34 AMAnything less than 2 monitors is a nightmare to me…
Inquisitorsz
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:36 AMI hate coming to work and having to use one monitor =(
on another note:
“But now monitors are cheaper, there’s no reason people can’t rock a four-display or six-display desk.”
There is a reason – you need a beast of a PC to run 4+ screens. not to mention at least a dual SLi setup.
Ollie
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 10:22 AM“dual SLi” is like saying ATM Machine.
And no, you don’t. any of the newer ATi cards are capable of running six displays on their own in 2D mode, it’s just a matter of finding one with all the right outputs to match your monitors.
MotorMouth
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:48 AMI have dual monitors at work but I don’t really find any advantage over the single monitor I use at home. It definitely makes more sense on MacOS, where window management is really poor, but on Windoze the benefits are slim.
The big issue, though, is that you don’t get great performance from multiple monitors unless you also have multiple graphics cards. Big 3D projects require dedicated, focused graphics. Its one of the things I dislike most about Macs – Apple’s drivers are written for multi-monitor support, which they do really well, not outright graphics grunt. Its why everything seems to run less efficiently on a Mac. If you are only doing a bit or writing and GIMP, you probably won’t notice but for TV/film work, you really need one card per monitor.
splintex
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 10:24 AMI’ve purchased Display Fusion Pro, makes window management a dream, plus extends your task bar across the multiple monitors.
Dewy7777
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:00 AMThere is something called spaces on mac, you should check that out, in my opinion it is much much better than windows management system.
Sam
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:16 AMReally? I have had videos rendering etc whilst having multiple games open, and my PC has never had a problem with it (only a single ati 6950 2gb gfx card in it)
Sam
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:16 AMForgot to add, with 2 monitors running at 1080p
Matt
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 10:23 AMI have two monitors at work. The second monitor just has my email on it. I find that I prefer having everything on a single screen, and rapidly switch windows. I prefer having one large, high resolution monitor at home for this reason.
Tristan
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:01 AMI use 4 screens at home (used to have 5, but wanted the deskspace back), 3 would probably be just as useful for me and am thinking of changing to this setup. I would love to only use a single monitor and rely on Mission Control, but I am not 100% sure it would be as effective.
Robert (B-ob)
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:07 AM2 monitors at work (1 landscape for main tasks, 1 portrait for coding / reading documents)
3 monitors at home 20+30+20 in PLP 4960×1600
Husky
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:18 AMEven as a student I love the 3 monitor setup up, and I kind of want a fourth. I usually have a couple of article to my left, my essays in front and note or a tv show on the right.
Simon
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:24 AMI use two at home, and two at work, plus a third to the side of my desk which is a dedicated SCOM dashboard for monitoring. I used to use three 22″ widescreens, but found i started losing applications in the expanse. Two is enough.. One for browsing/email etc, one for remoting to servers – using a tool like visionapp remote desktop.
Matty
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 1:38 PMDo one thing well instead of multiple things badly???????
More disitractions is more distractions & any interuption means it takes more time to refocus on what you were doing at the start
Ozoneocean
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 3:42 PMDesk space and power usage are my concerns. I like to stay pretty green generally, so I can’t justify too much excess because of that. My setup is a big Samsung LED TV screen and a big screen cintiq digitiser; for artwork and watching movies at the same time.
The Samsung is extremely energy efficient so it makes a good main monitor. I switch off my Cintiq when not doing artwork and just have the more energy efficient Samsung as my main screen. It’s big enough that it’s like having a dual screen setup anyway really.
If I wasn’t so concerned about energy use I’d add my spare 46 inch TV to the mix, but I’d also need to work out a mounting solution because although my desk is pretty huge, there’s no way I could fit all three of those big screens.
For stuff like twitter or other social networking I find it’s far more energy efficient and easy to use my phone or tablet. And I easily mount my tablet as another “screen” if I need it.
Dennison
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:23 PMI have been using dual monitors ever since I bought two 17″ Dell 1702 LCDs they set me back $2200 a pop back in 2000, but it was the best money spent. I can never go back to single monitor.
I currently run a 27″ Ultrasharp in landscape and a 24″ Ultrasharp in portrait, 24″ in portrait is brilliant for surfing the web, and reading long emails.
Love it.
MonitorMania
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 6:55 PMHad a 6 x 24 inch monitor setup at work for a while, which was handy especially when running linux & windows simultaneously.
Now using 8 x 24 inch monitors and I am finding that there are more monitors than I can fill up.
I would say that 6 monitors is about the most you would want. Any more and the screen estate does not fit in your field of vision.
Sean
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 9:54 PMWhat I think will play out over the next few years is the RSI side of having multiple monitors.
I am using 2 x 22″‘s and 1×19″ and I am finding that going from my far left to my far right screen is a pain in the ass.