Multiple Monitors, what do you use each for?

[Lobsang]

I have multiple monitors, but because they are different sizes I have decided to set them up vertically.

Until just now the upper one was hardly being used.

a few minutes ago I went to IWOOT (www.iwantoneofthose.com) and was finding it hard to see the items on my 24 inch 1920x1200 screen.

So the cogs turned and I have the windows magnifier taking up the whole of the upper monitor, acting as a magnifier for the lower one.

Linky

[Duckster]

Originally Posted by Lobsang

a few minutes ago I went to IWOOT (www.iwantoneofthose.com) and was finding it hard to see the items on my 24 inch 1920x1200 screen.

Found this ---> http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/outdo...owl/index.html

A fire bowl? Oh, pleeze!

You mean one of these vegetable steamers with holes instead?

[Lobsang]

That's what I thought when I saw it too! In fact my Dad has one.

[MissTake]

For work I have three monitors.
(L) is the laptop - I use for IMs, email
(C) is a standard LCD - used for the main program I run for work
(R) another standard LCD - used for our electronic files program or the internet.

In my telecommuting office at home I use the same laptop, but only have one additional monitor. I then use the laptop for the main program, monitor for everything else.

When I go in office I have to readjust everything - they never resync the same.

[Litoris]

At work, I have to have dual monitors since I do the phones and the chat for our website. On my left monitor, I keep my standard work programs running -- the phone client, the order entry screen, and the website. The right monitor is usually where I keep my firefox browser -- which is what I use for personal web-surfing (we are allowed to do that so long as a) it is nothing that would cause any kind of offense to others who might happen to see it, and b) does not interfere with our taking care of the customer) -- my business email client and the web chat client. Since I rarely have to deal with emails and our chat is relatively new (we've offered it for about a year and a half now) so not very busy, I usually have my firefox window maximised. I will also use the right monitor for any other programs that I might need to open, such as the time clock or the samples/returns database. Both of my monitors are the same size, and pretty similar, despite being different brands.

[Athena]

I have two monitors on my desk right now.

Monitor #1 is a 24" widescreen, and is my main monitor. Both my primary computer and my Mac are hooked up to it. The monitor has multiple inputs, and buttons on front to switch between them. If I want, I can run the Mac in a VPN window from the Windows box, too, but it's a little nicer to actually be "on" the mac so I tend to switch using the monitor switch.

The second monitor is a 17" cheapo for my second computer (an old PC). It's used for web surfing and whatever I don't need to be doing on my primary monitor.

I could hook 'em up so I had dual monitor on my primary machine, but I just don't feel the need.

I use Synergy to use the same keyboard/mouse regardless of what computer I'm using.

[Troy McClure SF]

At home, I have the 20" iMac and a 23" widescreen monitor. The iMac is on the right and I do most of my web browsing on it, along with photo editing, IMing and most "active" type stuff.

The larger left screen is generally for movies I have on in the background, or iTunes when I'm not watching anything. Multimedia, in a word. I don't have a TV in my room, so the second monitor fills that niche for me. Plus I can use it for photo editing/viewing if I need a bit more resolution, or if I'm showing stuff to other people (it's a small room and the 23" is closer to the door). I should probably go ahead and get a TV tuner so I can watch live baseball (mlb.com can bite me).

Here's an old picture of my setup. I have actual furniture now, but the setup is essentially the same. I wouldn't mind perching one or both on VESA arms extending from the wall. And for those wondering, that's Parminder Nagra.

[Scarlett67]

Left monitor: 22" LG widescreen. I keep my "work" documents on it: Word, Acrobat, dictionary, etc.

Right monitor: 19" ViewSonic. E-mail and Internet. This way I can surf, do a quick fact-check, or check e-mail and then go back to work on the other screen while the page loads or whatever.

Eventually I'd like to have three monitors. I can do up to four, but I don't know where I'd put them! Three will be a squeeze as it is.

[gotpasswords]

At the office, the 22" LCD is in front of me, and the 19" LCD is off to the right.

Working from home, the puny 15" laptop is in front and a 19" LCD is to the right. Once I scrounge up a dock, I'll be able to run two external monitors at home, at which point, the 19" will be center and a 17" will be on the right.

As with MissTake's setup, it's a bit of a battle to re-arrange everything. Desktop shortcuts, particularly, get scattered around. The initial setup was insanely challenging, involving re-programming the PC's BIOS to give preference to whichever type of interface that's present at boot, plus beating Windows itself about the ears until it remembered which was the primary and which was the desktop extension. Happily, it seems to remember all of that between locations now.

Normally, I park Outlook, Instant Messenger and the Active Directory console off to the right. From there, it's a bit more fluid as web pages will open wherever they deign appropriate. Probably because they're being pulled off an internal website, the Word documents and spreadsheets also pop up in unpredictable places. As a result, I've become somewhat ambidextrous, and just let things be where they will.

[Quartz]

I have 2 19" monitors. Right now I have one browser window on one and another browser window on the other. On other occasions, I've had a remote session to a customer or server on one and the helpdesk ticket or the relevant MS KB article or whatever on the other. Equally, I've had something running on one screen and had monitoring tools on the other.

[Eleanor of Aquitaine]

At work I have two 20-inch monitors side-by-side. Mostly I use them just to expand my desktop space, but I have the right-hand monitor on a KVM switch so I can view several other video sources when necessary.

When I go home it's hard to adjust to my single laptop screen.

[Bobotheoptimist]

Just two on this machine - built in screen has Outlook, Firefox, and test launching software as well as any documentation I have especially if it relates to the things on screen two. The second and bigger one has telnet sessions, test output, server status and/or remote access plus scripts I'm editing and documentation that relates to what's on screen one.

Stupid laptop won't let me hook up my other monitor so I could separate the test monitoring screens from the stuff I'm actually working on, and my 1u is too noisy to run in here so everything is jumbled together.