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.

Did’t say it was cheap, jsut that it was do-able without replacing the motherboard!

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.

Why do you need 2 x two PCIe x16 slots? Why not go for a 4 x DVI card like the Asus EAH3870X2?

To be honest Ed, I think if I was to take the 3 x screen approach I’d make the third screen a Wacom Cintiq – those things are nice and add a new dimension to having more screen real estate.

One day I had a brain storm and decided to go from my three monitors back to only two. Within a couple days the pain was gone and hasn’t returned.

I vote, stick with your current configuration.

Bill

I have a USB-DVI Adapter that drives a 1600 x 1200 monitor.

Although the DisplayLink driver software has gotten better in the past few months, there are a number of problems with it.

Primarily

1) High CPU Usage to the point that during CPU spikes my mouse would stop moving.
2) no support during boot of course
3) some issues with docking/undocking my laptop
4) occasionally “forgets” monitor configuration. Mostly a problem for laptops.

It’s neat technology though.

Then, I have a 1999-vintage laptop with Win 2000 that I use for printer-sharing (my old laser printer has a parallel connector, which new laptops don’t have), IM (Pidgin), and streaming audio (VLC). The laptop has a 400 Mhz Celeron CPU, 192 MB of RAM, 800 x 600 screen, and 8 MB of video RAM, but it is more than capable of doing these light-duty tasks with Win 2000 (heck, even Win XP runs suprisingly well on this old laptop — until you add security software, which makes it crawl). I suppose I could also use MaxiVista or Synergy and control everything with one keyboard/mouse, but it works fine with this setup.

So, that’s my “poor man’s” 3 monitor setup.

I’m a big fan! Love your articles! Thanks for the link.

> Jeff Atwood uses a Matrox TripleHead2Go device to drive his three monitors.

Actually, I don’t. I use two paired video cards to drive 3 monitors. Right now it’s a NVIDIA 9600 GT and 8500 GT pair. They don’t have to be the same brand, but they have to be the same family tree (ATI or NVIDIA) and same “generation”. At least in Vista, anyway. The simple path is just to get two of the same model. I highly recommend the 9600 GT at the moment, though the new ATI 4850 cards are outstanding as well.

Unfortunately to get real multimon, you must build your own PC, as big box retailers almost NEVER ship PCs that have two video card appropriate slots. One, if you’re lucky. Never two. Only aftermarket mobos offer this. So for the average user, they’re effectively stuck at two monitors.

I proposed the matrox as a postfix for people who aren’t willing to build their own PCs and get mobos that have two video card slots. It is my hope this will become more common in the future, but based on rabid cost cutting, I’m not hopeful.

The main advantage of three monitors is that you get a “center”. With two monitors, which one is primary? Left? right? Do you put them in the middle of your desk or off to the side? With two there’s a line right in the middle!

I do agree that the principles of diminishing returns kick in pretty quickly after two (for one thing, how much can you move your neck), but having a center is HUGE. Four is pretty much out of the question for me, but my life begins at three monitors.

I’ll add “2 or 3 monitors” to my dream-office wish list.

5120×1200 rocks!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mauidan/2308674134/sizes/o/

So I’ve got Vista on two monitors, and Linux on one. You simply can’t beat a Vista+Linux setup…. I can run any software I want, plus I’ve got the power of the linux command line at my fingertips.

Besides the graphics card issues, don’t forget the all important “desk” space issue

Malcolm