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Thread: Dual monitor setup

  1. #1

    Default Dual monitor setup

    Does anyone have a dual-monitor setup, if so why and how often do you use it? How useful is it?

    I've just bought a large 22" monitor for my office so I can do more work there, to plug into my Laptop (there is no desktop or anything else up there previously) and now am using my Laptop monitor as a second monitor. Finding it useful, working on the proper monitor, with background info (realtime stats on how all my businesses are doing) displayed on the Laptop. Almost makes me tempted to get a second monitor for my Desktop at home but not sure its worth it or not. The background info I've got running on the Laptop I normally have running on my iPhone when at home already anyway.

  2. #2
    I use a 19" monitor with my laptop at work, and I have 19" + 24" dual monitors at home. Very useful, given that I only watch movies and TV from a monitor as well.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  3. #3
    I had dual screens for a while. Didn't stay very useful for very long. Had my main stuff on one screen with gadgets and IRC on the other. Windows 7 does split screen on one monitor a lot better than it does dual monitors (especially when dealing with different resolutions). My main problem was that if anything took total focus on one monitor, I couldn't interact with the 2nd monitor. Never could get my mind to multi task with movies either. I was either watching the movie, or working on the main screen. That meant either not getting work done, or a lot of rewinding. For how little I used it, doubling the power draw for more screen space wasn't worth it. So I ditched that setup and I'm on a 23" 1080p monitor right now.


    Of course ATI has come out with eyefinity since then, which goes a long way towards blending 2-6 screens into one. I'm looking into making my next rig triple 19" monitors.

    Think Bitter has/had multiple screens as well.

    Old Setup:

    Click to view the full version

  4. #4
    Yeah, I use a 22" widescreen monitor at home and that's what I've bought for my office too. Multitasking different windows on the same monitor is quite simple to do .

  5. #5
    My wife finds a dual monitor system very useful when she's working - one monitor for contact stuff (e.g. email, skype, etc.) and any secondary documents, while her main focus is on the document/presentation/data/whatever on the larger display. She's a consultant, though, so she does a lot of document sharing, teleconferencing, etc, which means multiple displays are really useful. Don't know if it would be useful for me; I tend to be more single-minded.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    Does anyone have a dual-monitor setup, if so why and how often do you use it? How useful is it?
    Yes, dual 21.5" monitors, and pretty much all the time when I'm working on my desktop. It saves me from having to juggle or alt-tabbing between multiple full screen, or full monitor programs, in addition to being able to work on one and just glance over to the other to see changes I've made in one program reflected in another open program. Or I can have one program take up both monitors. Or I can leave one program to render or do whatever task it needs to do open on one monitor so I can check on it periodically while continuing to do other things on the other monitor. I've found Display Fusion or Ultramon to work out quite well with this setup, and I'm currently using Display Fusion, as its the cheaper of the two and comes with a lifetime subscription/license.
    . . .

  7. #7
    I've found having just one larger (28-32 inch) monitor at work makes me most efficient. My work monitor is plugged into a laptop that I could use as as second monitor (some people at work do this).

    But I don't like having a second monitor on the side. That requires a lot of head-craning that feels unnecessary. I prefer having one screen I can organize things. Plus it encourages me to prioritize and organize my desktop.

  8. #8
    I use dual monitors at work. One is the main monitor where I type in code and stuff. The other one is to display stuff. I also use the second monitor to monitor* the machine status when I am testing/debugging. It works good but I don't think it's really necessary.

    *Can I get a cookie for bad wordplay?
    "Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt

  9. #9
    I'm not very happy with the 30" at work, I find I have to move my head using it, plus it makes using a stylus kinda irritating, even though the stylus itself isn't exactly small either
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    I had dual screens for a while. Didn't stay very useful for very long. Had my main stuff on one screen with gadgets and IRC on the other. Windows 7 does split screen on one monitor a lot better than it does dual monitors (especially when dealing with different resolutions). My main problem was that if anything took total focus on one monitor, I couldn't interact with the 2nd monitor. Never could get my mind to multi task with movies either. I was either watching the movie, or working on the main screen. That meant either not getting work done, or a lot of rewinding. For how little I used it, doubling the power draw for more screen space wasn't worth it. So I ditched that setup and I'm on a 23" 1080p monitor right now.


    Of course ATI has come out with eyefinity since then, which goes a long way towards blending 2-6 screens into one. I'm looking into making my next rig triple 19" monitors.

    Think Bitter has/had multiple screens as well.
    That looks incredibly uncomfortable. Did you ever experience neck strain with that? I can't use a monitor for more than a couple minutes unless the top bezel is more or less at eye level.
    Your search had no results.

  11. #11
    Never felt uncomfortable in front on the computer. Having a screen so low as you're suggesting...I couldn't do that to my neck when I'm playing games.

    Screens for me are set so that my eyes are level with the center of the screen. Brandy's a bit shorter than I so she ends up tilting the screen down and the seat up a bit.
    Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 09-12-2010 at 10:34 PM.

  12. #12
    Spin it let's begin it. Angel_Mapper's Avatar
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    I use a triple monitor setup (24" widescreen center, 19" sides), mostly because it makes using UnrealEd so much quicker since I can have the content browser and Kismet editor on the side monitors. Normally I have my chat windows and JTV on the right, Firefox on the left and whatever I'm working on/gaming on in the center. For me, I've found that Ultramon is indispensable especially for having each monitor have its own taskbar. Also, when possible I run games non-fullscreen but at my monitor's resolution and sans border to effectively make it fullscreen, that way I can click over to something on another monitor without the game minimizing (and in some cases *cough TF2* crashing).

    The center monitor is on its own video card and the two sides are on another.

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    To have said goodbye to things!

  13. #13
    Dreaming meat Tempus Vernum's Avatar
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    I'm still using a single monitor at home but I'm on a triple monitor setup at work (2 x 24" widescreen, 1 x 20" standard) and it's so damned usefull.

    I usually have Visual Studio on the center screen and SQL Server Management Studio on the right. Then the left screen is for all the random crap I'm using: Firefox, Remote Desktop, FTP, File system, all those little fiddly windows that come with VS* and SQl Server


    *oh my god VS is so bad at remembering where I've put those windows, it always goes and rearranges them without asking me. Grrrrrr **
    **Yes I am rather particular about my desktop usage, why do you ask?
    Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant.
    For you.
    Hate.
    Hate.

  14. #14
    I run a three monitor setup at work, and often think about trying to turn it into a four monitor setup - if only I knew where to put the fourth. I usually have to run Visual Studio, Source Insight, the application I'm debugging, a bug database, 2+ command prompts, and two remote desktops with their own bunches of applications all at the same time. Often need an instance of a web browser too. Always have to shuffle windows.

    At home it's just a dual monitor setup. Very useful there too.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
    I run a three monitor setup at work, and often think about trying to turn it into a four monitor setup - if only I knew where to put the fourth.
    I have a suggestion!
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  16. #16
    god intended for setup to be between one man and one monitor

    I have an 22" external monitor that I use exclusively when I'm at home. Dual monitors never did much good for me. On the contrary, they tend to annoy me
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  17. #17
    Work. Have a likkle laptop with a likkle screen.

    Have a docking station at work with a 19" monitor attached. Dock the laptop when I'm in the office, use the laptop screen for emails and Sametime, and the monitor for pretty much everything else. Works a treat.
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    It's actually the original French billion, which is bi-million, which is a million to the power of 2. We adopted the word, and then they changed it, presumably as revenge for Crecy and Agincourt, and then the treasonous Americans adopted the new French usage and spread it all over the world. And now we have to use it.

    And that's Why I'm Voting Leave.

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