Multiple monitors, Multiple times the productivity?
1 03 2008I have been debating recently whether or not I should by a second monitor to increase my screen area and hopefully productivity (it’s not as if I just I’m just going to use it to play games on… well hopefully as that might lead to a decrease in productivity). I currently work from my Sony Vaio FE28B laptop, I really like it, its 1.5 yrs old and still does ok for my needs. It has a 15.4″ widescreen monitor, so I have been debating on whether or not to buy a second. Will it actually do anything for my productivity?
The disadvantage of using a single monitor is that you have to flip between screens when working in multiple applications, which is common for development. When I work I may have an email program, web browser, development environment (Visual Studio), and not forgetting iTunes. Flipping from one application to another takes more time and physical movement than I’d like. One solution that desktop users often go for is to get a radically larger monitor that can show multiple applications at once, but that would be rather silly since I’m using a laptop.
Does using multiple monitors actually increase productivity? Well according to some reports adding a second monitor increases productivity by up to 50%. I have no doubt that adding a second monitor to my setup would increase my productivity but not nearly by 50%, but I have found this very useful post written by a real programmer (unlike me; who just pretends to know what I’m on about). According to the post for this particular development team when dual monitors were introduced productivity increased by 10% and bugs decreased by 26% (which would be good from my current bug level of 99%).
So I have decided to attempt to find a second monitor, the only problem is I want one of the same size and aspect ratio (15.4″ & 16:10) as my laptop monitor. I have been trawling e-bay but at the moment the only ones that match those criteria seem to be faulty. I will post again as soon as I find something sutable.
For more on multiple monitors and productivity see:
