What do you do that requires 4 or 5 big screens? And you realize that 99.995% of computer users don’t, right?
I remote in to work. I’ve got the window of the resulting Windows 10 environment scaled to span two monitors. The left one is usually occupied by an Access database (3 windows; I hide whichever one I’m not using at the time). I also have an Excel document that shows up on that screen when not minimized. Both systems are used for tracking data that comes in via email. The right one is where I keep Outlook, which is aimed at a special shared inbox where I’m in charge of processing a certain range of inbound emails and their attachments. It’s also the screen on which Acrobat has its open files, which are the majority of the attachments, so that they’re directly in front of me while I do data input in the Access or Excel environments to my left. To the right of the entire Windows 10 environment is a Mac screen where a FileMaker window sits. I’m a FileMaker geek and have tailored a tool to run reports and fetch the exact filename to paste/replace the filename of the attachments as sent, and record their arrival, and supply me with the file or folder path to paste into various Windows address bars to simplify navigation. I’m typically copying pasting and tabbing and bouncing between Access, FileMaker, Outlook, and Acrobat, all keystroke-driven, with some macros to expand the knitting together of these elements. Above the middle screen is a browser window, one tab set to my individual work email (lower traffic than the shared inbox but I need to answer questions or send out reports to my supervisor etc), another tab to Outlook Calendar, three others to various arcane login screens to get into various assets, and one to my personal email account. Those are the most essential screens. I have an auxiliary one where I’ve got my VoIP telephony app’s screen parked, and another FileMaker database where I have passwords stored, and a timer/stopwatch utility. There are also word processor windows and image edit/display windows that get placed or minimized.
Yeah, personally I don’t see the issue for them. My iPad was $1049. My iPhone Max was $1099. A MacBook Air would be $1099. They’re getting a thousand bucks from you any way you slice it.
I don’t need a ton of screens, but i do see the benefit of having a single gadget that i can plug into a real screen and a real keyboard, but that also gets my phone calls and fits in my pocket.
As mentioned, there is DeX.
Sounds great. I’ll probably hold out for one that runs MacOS, since I’m Mac-centric. But yeah, that’s the general idea.
ETA: I’ve hooked my iPhone to (one) external monitor and to an external USB keyboard; mouse also, but iOS doesn’t really know WTF to do with a mouse, or at least didn’t as of the time when I tried this. And when it’s connected to all that, there’s no way to also have it plugged in for charging, which seems likely to deplete it rapidly.
iOS isn’t MacOS either.
With devices like the Steam Deck, it’s easy to see full-fledged (albeit low end) PC capabilities pressed into a phone-esque form factor as the tech needed for basic work gets smaller and smaller. It’s not uncommon at PC gatherings now for people to just bring their Steam Deck (or similar competitors), a monitor and Bluetooth keyboard/mouse versus lugging around a desktop PC or even a laptop. If most of what you’re doing is email, web browsing, social media, videos and even Office suite stuff, mobile has had you covered for years (provided you’re fine with Android/iOS as your environment). I don’t know how well phones/tablets drive multi-screen though. I’d guess “not well” but I’ve never had reason to check either.
I’m a multi-screen user for my work and my wife is as well. I’d have guessed it’s getting to be the norm these days for a Work-From-Home setup. In my case, I view a lot of PDFs and building plans and being able to move them onto a 24"+ screen is way better than looking at them on a little (even laptop-sized) screen and either having it reduced or scrolling around all over at larger sizes.
My own home personal setup is a single 27" screen but it does PC gaming and art AI tasks which are unsuited for mobile devices. Since I don’t need to bring it anywhere, I’m not even especially interested in the compromises a laptop would bring – give me the full tower full of hardware, baby.
I don’t need two screens, but I have two screens. 
2x Samsung 27" curved screens on a dual-arm mount so I can move them about as needed. Not exactly the same model but the only real difference is one has Displayport and HDMI inputs and the other only has HDMI. I can have a game full-screen on one monitor and a game map and/or a chat and/or a video and/or whatever on the other.
What’s odd to me is that most people seem to prefer two screens when you could get a single widescreen and just use windows.
Only if you only ever want them arranged side-by-side.
Having multiple displays is like eating from a main plate and a salad bowl and a soup bowl and a bread plate and a dessert cup. Having it all on one large screen is like dumping all that food onto a pizza-sized serving plate.
The folks who make the software have tended to make use of a screen, and scale things accordingly; having multiple screens doesn’t tend to translate into treating the whole display space as a single screen; instead, the software tends to “pick one”.
I’m currently in an unusual situation which illustrates this by providing an exception. I remote in to a workplace PC when I work from home; I really need the real estate of two Windows displays but the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection software wants to either seize just one display or attempt to use them all and go fullscreen mode, neither of which option is what I want. But RDC does at least let me define a display size independent of my actual monitors’ size and I’ve done so, defining a space that eats up exactly two of my five screens.
But that means it thinks of that space as one monitor. So when I launch Outlook or Microsoft Word, the splash screen is centered on the division between the two physical screens; any popup dialogs sprawl across the two with the empty space between physical screens splitting them.
The fact that that doesn’t typically happen to folks with multiple displays illustrates how operating systems and application softwares treat multiple displays differently from one large display.
Multiple displays is inherently better designed to do things like have a document window in front of you but all the tool palettes on the monitor to your left. Or to maximize a window and have it take up all of one display. Or to have a modal menu bar (the Mac universal menu bar) take up the top of one display. Very few “zoom” or “maximize” functions sprawl across multiple displays — they pick one. Likewise with dialogs and other tools.
- For the size I want some of my documents, a widescreen monitor still wouldn’t be large enough (if forced to share) unless it was ridiculously large and expensive.
- My wife wants one monitor rotated into portrait mode and another in landscape because of the programs she’s using in each.
- Since most people start with one monitor before desiring more room, it’s typically cheaper to buy a second 24" display than to buy a 49" display. Even more so if you’re starting with a laptop.
- Multiple windows on one large display means mucking around with window sizes
- People may prefer the mental separation that comes from this screen being for A and this screen being for B.
Tony Stark: How does Fury do this?
Maria Hill: He turns his head.
Tony Stark: Sounds exhausting…
Heh, I usually think of widescreens for gaming (of course) and creative utilities where you benefit from one wide window of horizontal information like video and music editing. I don’t really see them used (or in marketing photos) for office work like spreadsheets, email, reading PDFs, etc.
Panel prices increase per square inch as you get larger due to complexities in making the panels. Since your desk worker is probably using each screen for a discrete function and thus doesn’t care about bezels or separation, it’s cheaper to buy a couple 24" 1080p displays than a big ole widescreen with an equal amount of real estate.
Exactly. I have 4 feet of screen in front of me right now on a dual arm mount that all told cost me less than $400. A comparable single screen would be double that, at least.
It’s the mucking around with windows sizes which mean I don’t need multiple displays. I have seen lots of people who only have two sizes for windows: minimized and maximized. They of course need multiple displays if they want to see two things at the same time.
I’ll resize windows and move them around to get the view I want. My most common window is a text terminal, and there is rarely a need to maximize those, so having a whole bunch on one screen is easy.
I do understand the mental separation, as I use virtual desktops to achieve that. Typically I have my main terminals on one desktop, a browser in another, slack and teams on another, and more terminals scattered around as I need them. I can move between the virtual desktops easy,
and I don’t have to turn my head to do it. I agree with Tony, that does sound exhausting.
I don’t mean to invalidate other people’s methods of working. Different tasks are better suited to different layouts.
Sure, it’s going to be task dependent for a lot of people. I need to see large images and I want to be able to see as much of the image as possible at once so having half the screen be that image and half the screen be something else isn’t really an option. But then I DO need other windows open for the information I take from that image so it’s better for me to move the image to Screen A, full size, and use screen B to enter information off of it.
Potentially I could do this with a large enough wide-screen (via mucking around with windows) but there’s no incentive to take on the cost of a wide screen display of equal display size versus a couple standard screens.
For someone reading emails and browsing the web, etc you could likely get by with multiple windows on one screen. In fact, maximizing those sorts of tasks on my 27" screen is way too large. But using estimating take-off software on a full 27" screen feels just about right.
Only dropping in because I’m fascinated by the discussion of multi-screen setups.
To quickly answer the OP: yes and no. For my modest needs, VPN-ing into work occasionally for simple tasks, and the usual at-home stuff that doesn’t include a need for any type of gaming situation, it’s fine. I just use one really ordinary notebook computer 90% of the time, and can fire up some others if needed. I’m more compelled to upgrade my phone, with the cracked screen and all that, given how many ordinary tasks one is sometimes obliged to perform with a phone.
But my real question is, are tiling window managers a thing in the world of Windows/Mac OS? I would guess not, but having dabbled in them a while ago for some linux or other, my thought was: this would be ideal for a certain kind of task.
Windows will tile all your screens. Or maybe it’s Excel that does. Anyway, yeah, I’ve used that.
Mostly i prefer to manually size and place each window.
At the office i have two screens attached to my laptop. At home i have one larger screen. Each setup has advantages and disadvantages.
I don’t even know how old my computer is, maybe 5 years old or so. It’s starting to run a bit slow and sometimes crashes for no apparent reason. So I thought what the hell let’s look for a new one. I had 4GB of memory, looking for 16. It turns out that 32GB systems are more than what I want to spend. So I go online to Dell, HP, and Asus. First of all, I want a desktop, NOT an all in one. If only the filters were laptop, desktop, and all in ones. But no, they lump the latter two all together so I have to scroll through a lot of PCs I would never consider. Second gripe- they sure don’t want to include a DVD drive as they’re getting few and far between. I like to buy CDs and rip them to my iTunes so I can play music as I work. They don’t cost much to put in, why don’t they do it on more models? Third gripe- I want two video outputs so that when I retire and have real estate on my desk for two personal monitors I can do so. Anyway, I finally had some luck today- found an HP with 16GB, a DVD drive, two video ouputs, and a LAN and wireless internet interface for $680. This will be an upgrade from my current 4GB system. Of course in five years maybe 128GB systems will be all the rage.