In my mind, there’s no question that any information worker will be more productive with two monitors than with just one. I’ve been using dual monitors for at least five years, and I can see my productivity drop when I try to work with just one, as I do when traveling with a notebook.
I’ve considered adding a third monitor, but it’s never made it to the top of my upgrade stack. Partly, that’s because I’m not sure I’d really get a lot more benefit out of it. Some time back, Jeff Atwood argued that three monitors is the "sweet spot" in terms of desktop space, pointing out that Google’s Larry Page and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both use triple-monitor setups. Today, Scott Mitchell says he doesn’t see the payoff:
I’ve been using the three monitor setup for a couple of months now and regret to say that I have not seen the same productivity benefits or improvement of worklife that Jeff espouses or that I enjoyed when going from one monitor to two. For certain tasks I am more productive with three monitors than two, a prime example being if I need to review a client’s email while bug bashing. I can have the email open that explains the error in one window, Visual Studio in another, and the web application running in the third. However, for most other activities the third monitor does not add too much value. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for one of the three to sit unused for long stretches of time.
In my hardware setup, the biggest issue is how to drive that third monitor. Currently, I have a 24-inch (1900×1200) widescreen LCD and a 4:3 (1600×1200) LCD. Because both displays are the same height, they form a continuous desktop surface. I keep the Windows Vista Sidebar and the Taskbar on the smaller of the two monitors, arranged on the right. The widescreen monitor is on the left, and I use Ultramon’s extra taskbar to manage windows on that display. Here’s a bird’s-eye view:
Jeff Atwood uses a Matrox TripleHead2Go device to drive his three monitors. [Update: In the comments, Jeff clarifies that no, he doesn’t use this device. Instead, he has a pair of PCIe video cards.] As he points out, though, this device is less than optimal because it creates a single large display instead of three individual displays. For me, the dealbreaker is that it requires all three monitors to be the same resolution, and the maximum supported resolution for each screen in a three-monitor display is 1360×768. (The digital edition will handle two 1900×1200 displays, but that won’t help me.)
The more logical way for me to get a third monitor is to add a second video card. Alas, none of my desktop systems have two PCIe x16 slots. I’ve looked into using PCIe x1 slots and PCI slots, buut the performance is terrible and the price is high for those options. For my next desktop PC I’ll probably spec out a gaming-class machine that has two video card slots.
Meanwhile, I’m happy and productive with two monitors, and I guess it will stay that way for a while.
Update: I love my readers.
In the comments, James Tenniswood suggests a USB-to-DVI external adapter, which can drive an LCD monitor at 1280×1024 ($110, free shipping), or a high-resolution USB-to-DVI adapter that works at 1600×1200 ($130 with free shipping).
Reader Jeremy (no last name) swears by MaxiVista and says he “experienced a great lack in productivity” when he had to go back to two monitors after using three.
From Italy, Paperino says he is using an EVGA USB adapter with good results. Customer reviews at Newegg are mixed.
Any other options worth exploring?
Adrian, that card is over $400. Way more expensive than any of the other solutions.
Jeff, thanks for the comment. I’ll update the post to reflect your actual setup. BTW, it’s worth noting that Dell now ships at least two good designs with 2 PCIe x16 slots. The XPS 630 and XPS 720 are both available for well under $1000 refurb with excellent configurations.
You could drive two 1920×1200 monitors with a DualHead2Go Digital Edition, and hook your 1600×1200 lcd to your computer’s other graphics output. (Or have 2x 1600×1200 +1x 1920×1200). It comes with Matrox PowerDesk software to manage your windows.
“Adrian, that card is over $400. Way more expensive than any of the other solutions.”
Did’t say it was cheap, jsut that it was do-able without replacing the motherboard!
Like Malcom posted above, I also run three Viewsonic VP2030B monitors at 1600×1200. I’ve been running this setup for over a year and a half and it’s been a dream to work with. Until last weekend I was running these off of a Radeon x700 (PCI-E) for my main 2 monitors and an old Radeon 7000 (PCI) for my 3rd. (With this setup two monitors were connected DVI-D and one was connected with good ol’ VGA cable.) I just upgraded my machine, though, and am now running these off of twin Radeon HD 3650 512MB DDR3 cards on a motherboard with two PCI-E slots. (I now can connect all 3 via DVI-D cable and the 3rd monitor is that much crisper once again!) Yes, I made sure to spec out a gaming mother board when upgrading just to support two PCI-E cards for my three monitor setup.
Prior to getting my VP2030b monitors, for many years I used two 19″ CRTs and a 14″ CRT for my 3rd monitor.
I do a lot of coding and also spent the last two plus years working from home doing some intense graphic work in Photoshop. Nothing beats a three screen setup for that.
With Photoshop I dedicated my main monitor to the work area, the right monitor to pallets and Adobe Bridge (and winamp from time to time
). The left monitor was used as the misc. monitor. I’d open up folders, text files, email, Firefox, Trillian, a movie from time to time … etc.
When coding, it’s basically my editor on my main monitor, browser on the right monitor, and misc. on the left monitor (FTP, SSH shells, email, remote desktops, VirtualBox running differing OSes, etc.)
I definitely see a difference in productivity going from my three higher resolution monitors at home to two lower resolution monitors on my desk in the office. A lot of that may be because I’m used to throwing all the misc. windows off to the left allowing me to have more info at a glance and not having to juggle windows around as much. I do miss the third monitor when it’s not there … and one monitor seems so barbaric after having three for so many years.
Also, on top of having the three monitors (or two at work), I use Virtual Dimension for setting up virtual desktops. So I have three monitors width and many desktops deep (though I find that 3 deep works fine for me — 3×3 … 2×3 at work). This helps keep things organized even more. I find that when I’m coding, I’ll have all the progams open for a dev site on one desktop, the programs to work on the live site on another desktop … and inevitably someone wants something tweaked “real quick” and I’ll switch over to a third desktop and hide all the other clutter to do the fix and not be distracted by the other work. Hey, it works for me.
I do find that I agree that three monitors is a sweet spot. I toyed with the idea of getting four monitors when I purchased my three, but am glad I didn’t. It was more of a “I have four ports, I really should fill them all!” But when it comes right down to it, the three are balanced just right for the way I work, and I never have seriously thought that I wished I would have gotten that fouth monitor. I think it would have sat there off and unused 90% of the time.