Does more screen real estate make you more productive? | Hacker News Reader

Does more screen real estate make you more productive?

5 pointslyime11 comments

I have been using my 20" Dell LCD for 4 years now and debating if I need to upgrade or not.

What type of setups do you guys have. Does a big screen really help you design/ develop more efficiently?

Yes, up to a point.

I've used two 19" 1280x1024 monitors, two 20" 1600x1200 monitors, three 20" 1600x1200 monitors, and one 30" 2560x1600 monitor.

The most productive, and what I use now are the two 20" monitors. With three there was always one on the edge I didn't really use, and the 30" was horrible because minimize and maximizing windows was no longer useful. Rarely if ever do you want something to be 30" in size.

I'd guess what works best varies person by person, but once you have to move your head more than a little to see something, it's far enough away that you won't use it.

Classic Dilbert cartoon about dual monitors. It rings true...

Disclosure: I'm very happy with my secondary Dell 20" LCD - put my term windows and mail/IM windows there.

The cartoon is not available on the main dilbert site anymore... Hopefully this link works. http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s133/fottizio/Varie/dilbe...

I remember seeing Paul Buchheit's (Gmail creator) setup for pair programming. It is extra-ordinary.

Two laptops, one 1080p 42"+ HDTV

http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/quick-big-screen-de... http://tinyurl.com/2s9jz6

My home setup consists of two wide-screen 21" ViewSonic monitors. Wide screen is interesting, you can easily have three documents open side by side (html, css, and browser for example). I usually play a TV show or a movie on the other screen - gotta have something playing in the background.

Tall monitors seem interesting. I came across this photo of an office at Apple: http://www.officesnapshots.com/wp-content/galleries/apple/ap... I've never seen one of those, but that seems just incredible for coding (I know it's a flipped wide monitor, but the dimensions are interesting). You can see much more code in there. It makes code much easier to read and understand.

I absolutely love my two 19 inch Samsung 940BF's and I'm definitely more efficient with them. I can have my code on one side and a web browser on the other. If I'm doing schoolwork, such as writing a paper, well, I get a web browser on one side and Open Office on the other. I'm even more efficient at leisure now - I can browse the web on one side and watch TV or a movie on the other. I think my next display upgrade will be an array of either 3 or 4 monitors.

I disagree with the people posting about wishing they had a single large monitor -- I can't stand reading the tiny text on high resolution displays. I think 1280x1024 on an 18-19 inch monitor offers the best readability.

I'm using a Dell 24 - it's great, but I can always use more. The ability to view more of a given code segment helps me understand it more quickly.

An aside: I find that the (unix) screen utility is a great way to help me make better use of the the shell's real-estate. 'man screen' to find out more. The only real annoyance is the default use of ^a for everything, which I often use instead to go to the beginning of the current line. But it can be remapped.

Larger is nicer, but I think more is better. Having 2, 19" monitors would be much better to me over one 22 inch.

Currently I use a 22" wide and a 15.4" (laptop) as a second monitor.

I have two 19" monitors, and wish I had one, say, 30" monitor. I would like to be able to use the "center" of the screen...

Same experience here. Two monitors are not the same as one large high-resolution monitor. I wish I had one of the latter as well.

One 30" is much better. As you said, the center becomes usable again. I would never go back to two screens, even if they offered more total space.

That being said, I could go for one 42".

I solved that when I upgraded by going to a 19" flanked by two 17"s. It works beautifully. I have my editor on the 19", my documentation on the left 17" and my browser/console window (program output) on the right. I love it.

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