Increase your programming productivity by using two monitors

During the last 10 years, since I could afford one, my personal programming computer has been a portable computer, a notebook or laptop, because of my job as a consultant I'm "on the move" very often.

However not all the time I'm skiping around the world, belive it or not, I spend many hours working in our headquarters, and there I have external wireless keyboard and mouse connected to my laptop:



My choice has always been the ergonomic Microsoft hardware, expensive, very expensive, but worth the price, the quality is great (better than Internet Explorer), if you haven't tried on of these "twisted" keyboards, and you spend more than 10 hours hiting keys, you don't really know what you have been missing, the first two days you feel strange, but after that you cannot live without them.

Back in the age of the CRT monitors, I used to have an external monitor also, for two reasons: first, to give a little rest to the laptop screen, and second because some years ago, the monitors used to have a little more resolution than the laptop screen, that you could use, of course, if the laptop's external monitor adapter supported it.

Many years I worked at 1024 x 768 in the lap's screen and at 1240 x 900 in the external monitor, it used to be very comfortable, the laptop screen and keyboard are used only when I'm away traveling or in Sunday's afternoon when looking for personal stuff in EBay.

The last year we moved to a new office, so I wanted a high-tech facility and specially for myself, I wanted something like this:



No, It's not Bill Gates' office, nor Steve Jobs', nor Tony Stark's (Iron Man), it's not the control center of NASA, it's the HomeOffice (yes ! you read it, it's a HOME OFFICE), and belongs to Stefan Didak.

First time I saw it I told myself.... I want one of those..., but, after reading in Stefan's web why he uses 7 screens, how he has conneted them, and what he uses them for, I noticed that 7 screens were too much for me, so my first attemp was with two monitors only.

But... don't you already have two screens ?, the one of the laptop and the external monitor ?, yes of course, but I wanted A HUGE secreen, if you noticed, in the previous image, the first 3 upper screens share the same wall paper, this means that those 3 screens work as a single one.

WOW !, and how do you do that ?

That's what I wanted to know, so I went to ask to the Google oracle, and I found some video adapters with "DUAL" output, this means that a single card has two output connections for the screens, my problem is that I always use a laptop, so, another solution had to be found, and I found it in a hardware device of MATROX designed to be used with portable computers: the DualHead 2 Go



This little black box, takes the video signal of your laptop, and split it into two external screens and with the laptop screen you are done, you have 3 working screens attached to your computer.

Please notice: the dual monitor works as a single screen, the wall paper covers the two screens and the Windows' menu bar also does it, the screen resolution is the sum of both, so, if every single screen has a resolution of 1240 x 900 the dual monitor is 2480 x 900, more pixels for your money !!!.

The dual screen becomes the main screen, the secondary "extended" screen is now the laptop's screen, you can use it or not, if you need more working space.

To turn off the laptop screen, simply close it and work only with the lap as a CPU.

A great solution for only $ 179.00 USD, the price of the DualHead2Go in its analogic version, it comes with all the stuff needed to be working in 5 minutes after unpack it, after this great first experience I think I'm going to buy the digital version, for only $ 250.00 USD which supports higher resolutions.

Size does matter, so if you want it bigger then you can use a........ not a pill, stop thinking on that.... you can use a TripleHead2Go, which works for desktop or portable computers, this how Flight Simulator 3 looks like in 3 screens using this device:


Then I had to buy new screens, thus my laptop's is a 17 inches wide screen, I bought a couple of ACER X193W 19 inches Widescreen monitors, with a max resolution of 1240 x 900, I bought both in a Mercado Libre (Ebay Mexico) auction for only 240.00 USD BOTH, and because this invention has worked better than I expected, I plan to change them this year for two 24 inches screens.

Two screens over your desk take A LOT of space, so I decided "to rise" them over the desk to make more space and to work in a more comfortable way. I used a two screen VESA compatible support, like this:



The support attaches to the desk without any problem at all, you can modify the high to make them more comfortable, thanks to this, I earned about half a square meter for only $ 90.00 usd.

Ok, so far so good, but until now all have been expenses, where's the so named productivity?

The productivity comes when you start working with them, for example, I want to see how my Windows and Web applications look AT THE SAME TIME, so, I have my huge screen working and looks like this:

Picture of two monitors showing two application screens:



If I make a Print-Screen of the full desktop, then I have a giant desktop that looks like this:



Working with MS Office is a breeze, using Word you can view 2, 3, o 4 sheets in your document at the same time, and as you can see in the next picture, with Excel you can have visible from column A to column AC:



If you Print-Screen, you get this:



Working with Xailer is great, you can view the IDE in a single screen and the form designer in other, or you can see the debugger screen in one monitor and the running program in other, this is quite good and save you a lot of time.



The Print-Screen is this:




Where is the save of time ?, well, you can view and work with 2, 3 or any number of applications you want at the same time:




For example, you can check your email while you are surfing the internet at the same time, if you need to share information between two applications with two monitors is easier, avoiding you thousands of Alt+Tab.

Advantages:

• Increase the viewing area.
• The productivity increases at least in a 20% or more, assured.
• You can perform 2 or more tasks at the same time, by having every application maximized in a single screen.
• In some cases this could be less expensive than a single monitor with the same viewing area.

Disadvantages:

• The use of a dual monitor can takes a lot of space in your desk, but you can solve it using a support, and instead of losing space, you earn more.
• Two monitors consume more energy (but if Stefan Didak doesn't care about it, I don't do it either).
• It can be expensive, because you need extra hardware to make the dual monitor to work.
• It also implies cervical micro movements, that may cause neckache (no simptoms until now).

I'm very happy with my current configuration, a huge dual screen monitor, and if needed, a third one, the next step si to buy bigger monitors 22 or 24 inches.

Now I work faster and more comfortable.