If you have more than one screen...

[xoqolatl]

If you have more than one screen it's your unique opportunity to help me! I'm preparing an article dealing with professional use of 2+ monitors and many GPUs.

If you have 2 or more monitors and use them for any kind of productivity, please:
- tell me why did you decide to buy another monitor
- tell me did you have any problems setting up, if yes, what?
- tell me if your workflow has improved and do you think it was worth it
and the most important part:
- SHOW SCREENSHOTS of your workspace!
Not screenshots of your scantily clad woman wallpaper, but how things look when you work. For example, Photoshop on two screens with tools on one screen and the image on another, or Unreal Editor here and Content Browser there...
(I'm not counting on it, but if you happen to have 3 24" monitors with 1920x1200 resolution I will pay for every screenshot it's weight in gold)

Any help or opinions will be appreciated!

[darkpivot]

I'd help ya out but I don't use two monitors anymore. I used to but ended up lending one of them to my brother when his other one broke.

[Gary]

Main:
42" 1080p HDTV
Secondary:
22" 1060p Acer Computer monitor
Tertiary:
22" 720p HDTV -Not connected unless I find a cheap and simple display port thing.

- tell me why did you decide to buy another monitor

Got a TV that happened to be 1080p and have an HDMI port. My 5770 has an HDMI out port. So, why not?

- tell me did you have any problems setting up, if yes, what?

Well, I was going to use my old 720p 22" TV has a third monitor, but I didn't feel like going through all this "DisplayPort" crap to get it to work.

- tell me if your workflow has improved and do you think it was worth it

Definitely has improved, even when I'm not working on something, just browsing the web in one and using the other for Steam's IM client. When I am working on something, like the UDK, I got the editor in one monitor and the content browser in the other. When Source mapping, I got the engine in the secondary monitor and Hammer in the main, after a quick compile, I go over to the other monitor and just type "Reload" (and reload_materials if working with VMTs) in console.

- SHOW SCREENSHOTS of your workspace!

(I'm not counting on it, but if you happen to have 3 24" monitors with 1920x1200 resolution I will pay for every screenshot it's weight in gold)

I would have a third if I didn't have to mess with the display port crap.

[bitPanther]

those are some nice looking rocks you have there

[xoqolatl]

Thanks a LOT Gary! That's exactly what I needed, but can you make a screenshot instead of a photo? use printscreen or if that doesn't work - MSI Afterburner.
If you don't have any objections your screenshot will be posted in the article on pclab.pl (Polish hardware site).

[BubbleQ]

Main:
Samsung 2233 120hz 22" @ 1050
Second:
Samsung 913n @ 1024

I decied to buy an xtramonitor cuse I needed the workspace. Many times when I wrote long school documents I could have a website on one monitor and office on the other, also this goes in hand with tutorials...
An other reason was that on some of the jobs I have been to, they used it an dI thogut it would be good practice
I also love that I can play games or whatever in wating for an stream to come on, or perhaps asI use this in mostplaces is to have IRC idling. Exelent for webdisegn, the list can be loooong^^

For the techincal part I had no problems, booth with nvidia and amd/ati. Windows 7 and linux worked also great, I was amazed it was so easy that it actually was.

Many times when I try to help other people on their computers, I tend to try to move windows out of the monitor
It only takes one minuit or two to get used though...
I would say that overall my workflow has increased alot. It did not really od this in the begging but after alomst a year with this setup you deveolp small tricks etc. So yes, but I could imagine that this would have more of an change on like win xp where windows can't snap that easily.



Here is the setup in full res when I would write a schooldocument or something: http://www.speedyshare.com/files/29582505/monitorssss.jpg

[Gary]

@Panther:
For being about 5 different types just being rescaled over and over, it did come out pretty nice.

@Xoqolatl:
I'm away from the computer right now so I'll have to get that to you tomorrow afternoon/night and I don't mind you using it, just make sure to link me to it afterwards

[marks]

would post, but I'm at work so I'd have to blur out literally 90% of my monitors >_<

[xoqolatl]

No problem, you can blur everything important, or load an example map if you're on UDK... unless the tools you're using are also confidential.

[marks]

just remembered I posted one up a while back

[pk_hunter]

Main:
22" 1920 x 1080 (16:9) Viewsonic
Secondary:
22" 1920 x 1080 (16:9) Slightly older model Viewsonic

- tell me why did you decide to buy another monitor

Around 4 years ago I bought a 24" HDTV for my 360 and noticed it had DVI-D input as well, so just out of curiosity I tried it on my PC alongside my, at the time, 19" 16:10 monitor. Immediately I noticed the advantages when using programs like Sony Vegas, Photoshop and Hammer. Since then I've upgraded to two 22" 16:9 Viewsonics.

- tell me did you have any problems setting up, if yes, what?

Nope.

- tell me if your workflow has improved and do you think it was worth it

In programs like photoshop and Hammer, the ability to have a reference image on the next monitor is fantastic. For video editing, which is a huge part of my job it is also great to have my preview window on a separate monitor at full scale (either 1080p fullscreen or 720p windowed). Also I can have Vegas and After Effects open on separate monitors to see how an effect I'm doing in After Effects might look when it's part of a cut sequence at a glance.

[marks]

- tell me why did you decide to buy another monitor

Because I needed to have 2 programs open at the same time, and alt-tabbing is annoying and time-consuming. Also having another monitor to put reference on is really nice. I actually often have a whole monitor just for reference images when I'm at work.

- tell me did you have any problems setting up, if yes, what?

Absolutely none at all. I plugged it in, and it worked.

- tell me if your workflow has improved and do you think it was worth it

Absolutely it has, it is a really important thing that I would absolutely miss if I didn't have it - totally worth it.

and the most important part:
- SHOW SCREENSHOTS of your workspace!

[xoqolatl]

Thanks a lot!

Still need more, don't be shy, share your multi-monitor setup with us!

[Terr]

Can't take a photograph right now, but my cubicle came with:

• Two 19-inch screens running 1280x1024
• Left screen: Planar PL-1900
• Right screen: Acer AL-1916

Usage: One screen typically holds just the programming IDE, while the other often shows a web-browser, either for documentation reference purposes or else for the interactive debugging of a web-application.

Worth it?: Two screens are useful, but when it comes to working on code a single larger (and high-resolution) screen can be even better in terms of how it lets you leverage your IDE. However, two screens are often cheaper and good tools will allow you to "undock" aspects of them and move them across.

[xoqolatl]

Can't take a photograph right now

Please take a screenshot of your desktop with your apps running then