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Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

I have three words for you, my friend: "electric space heaters". :)

I won't dwell on the fact that laptops are ergonomically evil and will eventually send you to the doctor with one form of RSI or another. If you don't already understand this, it will be very hard to convince you.

Instead I'll point out that your productivity is proportional to how much monitor you've got. Researchers have measured this [1][2], hackers [3] and techies [4] have testified to this, and Apple has sold a lot of incredibly expensive 30-inch displays because of this. Why are you killing your own productivity in order to save the cost of running an electric space heater? Is it the coffee? Don't get hooked on the coffee!

[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen_resolution.html

[2] http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=433

[3] http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005541.html

[4] http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/05/31/dual-monitor-display-inc...

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Second the fact on laptops - they are indeed ergonomically evil, unless you have a laptop stand with an external keyboard ...but then you might be on a "web 2.0 three month mashup" - in which case it is probably ok , anything longer and youll screw up either your wrists or your neck if not both. If you want to have good food too consider moving your startup to india - it costs around 60$/mnth for your own personal cook.

I tend to use my laptop on the go and in the living room and not much for work. I have several desktops for developing on.

Lets not forget desktops are cheaper than laptops so you could do it cheaper by buying a desktop and a coffee machine ;)

When I'm moving around I often use a backpack to carry my laptop (I don't know how much of a threat this really is, but if I were going to mug someone I'd be more likely to go after the guy carrying case that almost certainly has a laptop in it, vs. a guy carrying a beat-up old bag that might just be full of dirty clothes.)

So I often throw in a keyboard and mouse. The microsoft 'comfort curve' is particularly well-suited for this, though it is a bit long.

I'm not buying it. The bottleneck in my productivity is definitely not switching between virtual desktops and windows. More/bigger monitor is a "nice to have."

I'm not sure... I've become addicted to my vertical split-screen in emacs.

Often, I feel like I can only have so many finger macros loaded at once. I do a lot of switching back and forth merely to reference stuff. Error messages, output, data structure definitions, grammars, etc-- if you're trying to modify code based on information like that, it helps a ton to be able to see that and your code at the same time.

When working on multiple projects, it's easy to forget about stuff that gets buried; especially buried under explorer windows.

If you're waiting for an important email or IM or something, being able to see activity on a separate screen out of the corner of your eye is often preferable to (a) periodically checking or (b) setting some sort of flashy or loud message box alert

If you have server monitoring requirements, or stock market monitoring requirements... the list goes on. Screen real estate is important, so long as it's organized appropriately.

YMMV, of course. I've had issues like this for my whole life. If I need to use a reference for something, I slow way way down unless the reference is convenient.

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