Using Two Monitors Makes You More Productive?

Double Vision asks: "In my job, I work with several software applications at once. I find that constantly switching back and forth wastes a tremendous amount of time and causes me to lose focus. My video card supports two monitors, so I found a discarded monitor in my office and hooked it up. This has made it much easier to do my job. However, we are getting ready to go through an equipment audit, which means I will likely lose my additional monitor unless I can justify keeping it. How can I make this case? Is anyone aware of studies that support my claim that two monitors makes me more productive?"

Trivial ?

Monitors are cheap. Dirt cheap compared to the salaries of most people sitting in front of them.

If you merely spend five additional minutes on work each day that you would have had to spend on shuffling windows around, the investment in an additional monitor will pay for itself within weeks.

Re:Trivial ?

Dirt cheap compared to the salaries

That really depends on where you work; there are a lot of shitbox companies around there that pay the minimum amount to put food on the programmer's table. A lot of managers don't think of "if we spend this we'll save twice that" they think "if we spend this we immediately reduce the bottom line by the same amount, fuck that!"

Re:Trivial ?

A lot of managers don't think of "if we spend this we'll save twice that" they think "if we spend this we immediately reduce the bottom line by the same amount, fuck that!"

Well, that's the bad thing about capitalism today - it's been replaced by blind greed and short-term thinking. The term "investment" (the basis of all capital) is pretty much forgotten. Instead, "investing" money is considered "spending" it.

Re:Trivial ?

Wrong, when audited, you can't compare a hidden benefit with a visible cost, no matter how positive it might eventually be.
An old french playwritter, Molière, has one of its characters say it is better to die according to the medecine than to live against it. You can also check todays post about outsourcing for more examples.

Hidden ? Obvious.

Wrong, when audited, you can't compare a hidden benefit with a visible cost, no matter how positive it might eventually be.

If your salary is $50 an hour, then every second you spend on unproductive things becomes a very visible cost, especially if those seconds add up.

If the bean-counters at the company don't see that, they're effectively incompetent. Which usually points to bad prospects for the future of the company.

Re:Hidden ? Obvious.

I disagree, wasted time is a cost, but it is not visible one, I would even say it is the best example of hidden cost since it has a real effect on your productivity but doesn't show on beancounter's charts because it doesn't change your salary.

Re:Hidden ? Obvious.

If your salary is $50 an hour, then every second you spend on unproductive things becomes a very visible cost, especially if those seconds add up.

So how much money has Slashdot cost your company?

Re:Hidden ? Obvious.

So how much money has Slashdot cost your company?

Not much, I got two monitors!

Salary per hour? Not really!

If your salary is $50 an hour, then every second you spend on unproductive things becomes a very visible cost, especially if those seconds add up.

Your fallacy is highlighted above. Most "employees" are not paid by the hour. Contractors, who are paid by the hour, simply don't complain about unproductive work conditions provided at their environment by their customers. They'll happily take the extra time required to do their job with the tools at hand; it's the capitalist way, after all.

My guess is that you've simply conflated two issues. You've forgotten that any employee on a salary will simply be expected to put in overtime to compensate for any inefficiencies. It costs the company exactly $0.00 for a salaried employee to simply "waste" those precious extra seconds that you claim will add up. They add up to nothing but more "free" hours put in by our protagonist for the company served.

If the bean-counters at the company don't see that, they're effectively incompetent. Which usually points to bad prospects for the future of the company.

The bean-counters know exactly what they're doing. They're extracting more value (your time) from you at no cost. That free productivity (salaried--unpaid to the employee--overtime) looks great on the balance sheet, compared to the price of an extra monitor. If you can't see that, I think you might need to re-evaluate the target of your insults.

Re:Trivial ?

Wrong, when audited, you can't compare a hidden benefit with a visible cost, no matter how positive it might eventually be.

Don't make it a hidden benefit. Quantify how much time it saves, you don't need big numbers. Can you demonstrate a 5 minute per day benefit? (10 seconds a windows switch, thats just 30 switches a day). Thats 100 minutes a month. In 6 months, thats 600 minutes, or 10 hours. Now your company almost certainly has an internal billing rate they use when considering your time (even better if they have an external rate), its likely at least 2x your current salary (it costs to hire you, house you, train you, etc. You are an expensive asset). Lets say you are a young average programmer, thats still a $50/hour internal billing rate. So long as your second monitor costs less than $500, it pays for itself in 6 months.

Re:Trivial ?

you wish! the bean counters at most companies will frown on ANY expense for employees, ESPECIALLY if it's for one employee only, since at that point other employees might want it as well.

The way things are nowadays in terms of hardware I don't see why any developer should be expected to work on less than a dual or quad core workstation, with two 24"/30" lcd monitors, 4 gigs of ram, plenty of sata disk space in raid and ergonomic keyboard, mouse, chair etc. etc. etc. heck, even if they were given a fully loaded dual-quad-core workstation for 10 grand, it'd still be only a fraction of their yearly salary, and would very much positively impact productivity.

Instead you still see companies giving their employees pentium 4s at 2.5GHz with maybe 1 gig of ram and 80gigs of ide disk, a single 19" (if not 17") 1280x1024 crt and the absolute cheapest keyboards/mice/chair possible (often the mouse doesn't even have a scroll wheel and the chair is the local staples $100 special). Same deal with managers more often than not getting laptops, ergonomic chairs, big monitors, ... when often 'individual contributors' could use all of them more.

If hospitals were run the same way as computer companies surgeons would operate with box cutters and duct tape, and diagnose with an old x-ray machine, while the hospital managers would have MRI machines in their offices and clip their cigars with surgical grade scalpels...

Regarding the OP's problem the solution is simple: they should pony up $200 of their own money and buy their own secondary monitor, when the audit comes either they can show the second monitor is theirs or take it home that day and bring it back once the audit is done.

Here's a study

After a bit of Googlin':
Two Screens Are Better Than One [microsoft.com]

The best part is that it was done by Slashdot's nemesis. :)

Re:Here's a study

1) Many OSes don't tile windows well. To have two windows properly tiled on a single monitor, you need to minimize everything but those windows and then choose to tile all nonminimized windows. (At least this is my experience with Windows XP) It's faster to just drag one app to your second monitor and maximize it.

2) The aspect ratio of a single 16:9 screen doesn't fit two 4:3 screens well. While for editing Word documents this is not a bad thing (and could be good in fact), for editing PowerPoint documents, images, and Excel spreadsheets, dual 4:3 is better.

3) Moderate sized 4:3 flat panel displays cost a fraction of the price of an Apple 30" display. The Apple 30" display is $1500-2000, 19" 4:3 displays are $200-250 each.

4) Most workers already have their first monitor. Adding a second is cheaper than chucking it and buying a large widescreen, even if that large widescreen were remotely competitive for these purposes with dual 19s in price.

I have a second monitor in my cube, but it's an old beat-up CRT and I don't have the desk space to use it. :(

Re:Here's a study

Speaking as someone currently using two 17" monitors, I think two monitors is better.

1. 30" monitors cost a *lot* more than two 17" monitors. Like, £1000 more.
2. 2560x1600 isn't as good as 3200x1200, IMO. The 30" monitor is too tall, I prefer something wider and flatter.
3. My monitors are arranged to surround me, rather than forming a flat panel. This means I'm looking at them close to straight whether I'm looking in the middle or either edge. With a single big monitor, I'd have to have them flat, and would be viewing them significantly off-straight at the edges.
4. With multiple monitors, software can be manipulated easily to take up exactly half of the display (using the maximize buttons), which is useful when you are using exactly 2 applications -- something I do regularly (e.g. IDE for development and web browser for reference). I don't believe achieving this is easy with a single large display.

Always

I had two monitors on my desk for a long time. One eventually got bad enough they replaced it with a flat panel. The new panel was so good that I couldn't use the remaining CRT (and also, my eyes were fucked as a result of the shitty old CRT they wouldn't replace sooner).

Long story short, I ditched the second CRT and they wouldn't replace it. My productivity dropped enormously. I actually found it most beneficial to have email, a browser or some documentation for the toolkits I was using open in fullscreen on the second display. It made finding a reference a simply matter of glancing across rather than bringing up another window, losing the context of what I was doing then having to do the shuffle back and forward.

Not only that, but I save on printing because I can keep things open on the second screen for reference like the output of a program working on. The same applies to anyone who is expected to multi-task at work though. Two screens are better than one unless the one screen is a 30" high resolution panel.

I don't know how anyone wrote software back in the days before dual high resolution screens. It's a time consuming chore, requiring a number of dead tree tomes open on one's desk and constant shuffling about.

Did the same thing..

At my job we had a consultant that worked on the desk behind mine. After he left his computer area was left abandoned, and actually the desk and other parts of it were to go to me for my work area (for some reason my boss felt I needed both a desk and a "writing table"). Anyway, they didn't seem to have any purpose for the computer and monitor on the desk when I asked my supervisor, so I hooked up that second monitor to my machine.

I of course told my supervisor about this, who after hearing the explanation of it thought it was actually a good idea. All I needed to do was write up a justification on why I needed a second monitor, and they let me have it. Justification isn't really that hard, especially if you're a programmer. The ability to have your IDE or editor or whatnot on one screen while viewing the output, documentation, or APIs on another is incredibly useful, and can speed up your work significantly. I'd go and say something like that to whatever supervisor or person in charge of equipment before they got to looking at the equipment at your desk.

Interestingly, after I got my second monitor, a coworker friend of mine came to my desk from the building across the street and saw the setup and was extremely jealous. He ended up finding a spare monitor near his desk for his own setup. After that, all of the people near his desk saw his setup and wanted it to. We actually ended up having some ITS meetings where enough people brought up the idea of dual-monitors that it's now a standard request for people to get with minimal justification. So who knows, maybe you'll start a trend like what happened for me.

Re:Did the same thing..

I had the same thing. I took a spare CRT, and my boss at the time really liked the setup, so he got me matching 17" LCD's. One of my coworkers also got matching 17's. My old boss now has 4 monitors, 2 19" LCD's, a 17", and a widescreen 24. He only really does work on 2 of them, the 17 is for viewing our internal help desk website for new tickets, and the widescreen is for our camera DVR system. My new boss now has a 19" LCD to connect to his laptop, and we are talking about pushing 2 monitors down to some of the regular non-IT employees in certain positions where they would benefit.

It's nice to work in an environment where people recognize potential productivity increase when they see it. 17" LCDs are cheap now. Easily $150 or less. A spare video card or a dual vid card can be cheap, I spent $35 on the one I use at work.

If you job complains about spending $150 on a long term investment in your productivity, then you should start looking for a new job. Of course, people are giving away CRTs all the time, you could always offer to bring one in. Check freecycle.

In my experience...

At my previous job I was also using 2 monitors, which definitely made me more productive as I could more easily compare information on different screens.

At my current job I only have 1 monitor and it took me a while to get used to it again. I would ask for a second screen but I already know the answer... "No, because otherwise everyone would want a second screen."

While on my departement, everyone would be better of with having a second screen, the average amount of windows open at the same time is at least 10. It would definitely increase productivity but explaining this to management who at most have their e-mail and text processor open is a lost cause I fear. Well, at least at home I have 2 screens to enjoy.

Also, on a related note, I found synergy [sourceforge.net] to be an amazing tool when using multiple computers at the same time. It allows you to share the same mouse and keyboard between multiple computers by sending the signal over the network and it behaves just as if you had multiple screens on 1 computer (move between screens by going to the side of the screen). I haven't used it for a while though because I didn't have to work on multiple computers at the same time. But if you are, definitely check it out!

THREE Monitors

I do web development for a living, and I find that having three monitors works the best for me. I have the web browsers on the left, all of my code in the middle, and my documentation on the right. No need to waste time alt+tabbing around, switching desktops, etc., etc. I find it to be very helpful. I think that four would be overkill, though.

I would imagine that for any kind of development, two is better than one. For some, three may or may not be as useful, but as I said above, I like three.

it's a no brainer.

If you have to look at output while editing anything two monitors tends to be more effective.

I actually started using a dual head setup years ago (think pre-AGP days) when I had two PCI cards pushing monitors and Windows 2000 had just finally gotten a semi-automatic way to span them. And I've never gone back.

You'd think "ALT-tab" wouldn't be such an effort... until you don't have to do it.

My wife made fun of it, until I upgraded my CRTs to 19" LCD. Giving me a spare CRT to hook up to the second video port on her nVidia card. Then she found the ability to have research and documentation up on one screen, and whatever she was working on on the other. She's also never gone back.

At my work they have been moving us to Thinkpads for almost all of our production network boxes (test racks are a different matter). They got us docking stations with monitors for when we were in the office. Then I realized instead of that I could use the laptops screen as primary and the docking station screen as a second monitor. On top of that the LCD's they got for us were some nice Dell model that you can rotate to portrait mode. You don't want to know how much faster and easier is it to scan a dual column diff when you have portrait mode...

From a money perspective, if a second LCD monitor costs your company $150, and you make $40 an hour all it has to do to pay for itself in a year is save you 3 hours and 45 minutes. Over a 200 day work year.... Meaning about 1 minute and 12 seconds a day and it pays for itself.

Hack the system

Bean counters will be bean counters. Use ignorance to battle ignorance.

Put a label on the monitor saying "Do Not Inventory". And sign the note illegibly.

The bean counters will either ignore the monitor, which you want. Or they will count the monitor. If they count the monitor, then put the monitor in an empty cube, and make it look like it is connected to a computer. If there is no name on the empty cube, make a name plate for the cube. The name on the plate must be "M T Box", and explain to your cow-orkers that the cube is being held for the new Chinese intern. If there is no empty cube, get a keyboard, and make it look like there are two people working in your cube. Explain that you have to share your cube with the new Mexican intern named No-Say Yama...

Re:Forget extra monitors

Unless you are actually needing to see more things at the same time, extra monitors are a waste of desk space and electricity.

I supposed you don't need to look at data sheets while you program. Sure, you don't need to see the IDE and the datasheet at the same time, but just switching between the two fullscreen apps on a single monitor costs you more than enough time, since you lose track of what was in the old window and need to orient yourself in the new window.

Re:Forget extra monitors

Virtual desktops have several advantages compared to real ones:

• Switching latency: it's much slower to mash the keyboard to switch desktops than to move one's eye.
• Simultaneous typing: you can't enter text in one window on a virtual desktop while simultaneously viewing a window on a different virtual desktop; I do this all the time on my dual-monitor setup when looking at API documentation.
• Spanning: although it's ugly, spanning windows across both heads comes in handy more often than you'd think, especially for badly-written pages or images with strange aspect ratios.
• More space for monitors: with more _real_ desktop space, you have more space to put various useful sticky windows. For example, I have gkrellm instances monitoring our servers sticky on my left monitor; with a single-head setup, I'd have to leave the monitors on just one of the desktops, which would defeat the point of constant monitoring.

Re:Forget extra monitors

Unless you are actually needing to see more things at the same time, extra monitors are a waste of desk space and electricity.

But what about those of us whose work does involve seeing more things at the same time?

At work, a lot of us have been picking up older screens to use as second monitors over the past year or so. This was mostly luck, rather than a management decision: someone noticed that the standard-issue graphics cards in one generation of PCs we had included two output ports, and tried it out with an old 17" CRT that was otherwise sitting idle.

Among other times this is useful for us in our everyday work:

• code vs. on-line help
• debugger vs. running program
• documentation tool vs. whatever is being documented (code, UI, etc.)
• diff tools (see full-width code lines side by side, one on each screen).

I could list many more, but those are fairly typical examples of things we do a lot during the course of our development jobs. It's not hard to imagine applications either: anything involving applications with lots of toolbars and such (graphics, CAD) must be a good candidate.

I don't have any quantitative data, but having made the switch myself a few months ago, I definitely spend a lot less time messing around changing windows and arranging desktops than I used to. The only annoyance is that I sometimes switch to look at the other screen without making the application there active, and then start typing. :-/

Re:Forget extra monitors

I don't agree. I use two monitors AND virtual desktops. It's much more productive to be able to refer to things on one display while you are working on the other. While virtual desktops are handy for some things, such as working on separate projects, they are not a replacement for two monitors. When I'm on my laptop (single screen obviously) I find myself constantly flipping desktops, min/maxing windows, etc. which is annoying. A single monitor can be as productive as two if it's huge, like one of those 30" displays. Even then, my two 21" flat panels give me more physical display area for a fraction of the price of the 30" displays. My two LCDs also use less energy than one crt, and that minimal electricity usage is made up for in increased productivity.