Early birthday present. I’ve been wanting a second monitor for a while and now I have one.
Hey, look at my mouse pointer, it’s over here! Woop, now it’s over there!
Macromedia Director - I can see my stage! It’s no longer buried under the score, cast, and script windows!
Ditto Flash!
Photoshop - I can leave the brush menu open instead of having to dock it because it’s FRIGGIN HUGE! I can blow up my projects fullscreen and not have to juggle my toolbars!
Ahhh, space.
Here’s the question: Aside from actual work- and school-related uses, what else will I find these beauties are good for?
I’ve actually got 3 (at work) and this arrangement allows me to do mapping and seismic investigation at both regional and intimate levels. Actually, each screen can display 4 different panels so I’ve got 12 different displays on this workstation and can log into multiple accounts and projects wothout having to exit another. Course, you don’t want to pay what my company paid for this arrangement.
At home though I’ve got one crappy monitor so yes, I still envy you.
I used to have dual monitors at home, but I found that I needed to sacrifice desk space in favor of, uh, desk space. If that makes sense. Now I only use one.
It was invaluable back when I did a lot of writing and school work. Being able to pull up a web page on one screen while I had a word processor up on the other was invaluable.
Besides work related stuff…not much else you can do with it. I can only think of two games that use 'em. MS flight sims and a nifty multimonitor enabled map for Ultima Online.
Still a pretty cool trick. I’ve been tempted to get a bunch of dual head pci cards and see how many screens I could hook up. I keep meaning to set something like that up at work for myself since I could use some extra space.
Congratulations on the second monitor…I could not function here at work without one.
We are a graphics shop and we use the 2nd monitor as a toolbox monitor and have all the toolbox/inspector windows open all the time. It is so much easier to work this way.
I often keep network shortcuts on my second monitor and sometimes desktop applications over there. That keeps them off my main desktop, but leaves them easy to get to.
It says something about my level of dork kung fu that this thread inspired me to hook up an extra monitor at work just now. hangs head in shame And all so I can keep a pdf and my expanded winamp playlist open…somebody stop me before I start firing up more spare monitors…
Yeah, like GraphicsGal said, having too monitors is really great for graphics type work. I have two monitors at work (flat panel which is great because there’s less than an inch between them) that I use for CAD work. I can keep the drawing open in one window and toolboxes in the other. Or I can open up two views.
The only use I could think of for two monitors at home would be so I could play Freecell while cruisin’ the net without switchin’ windows…
I effectively have two monitors (it’s a PowerBook, with support for an external monitor). At work I have a big 20" Sony Trinitron, so I use it as the primary and relegate the built-in TFT to auxiliary-monitor status. (I use a real keyboard and mouse, too) In FileMaker (geeking around in FileMaker is what I do for a living), I can have a layout displayed on one screen while editing a script or doing field definitions on the other; or I can print field defs or scripts to PDF and have the PDF doc open on one screen and FileMaker on the other. At the moment I have two emails on the aux monitor because I’m expecting a callback, and my browser is occupying most of this one.
At home, I have an older Sony, a 15" Trin, so I let the laptop screen be primary and I use the built-in laptop keyboard (it’s OK for evening /weekend use) although I still hook up a mouse.
The cool thing is that when it boots it recognizes which monitor is which, and remembers to put the menubar and other main-screen deelybobbers on the Trinitron when I’m at work but on the laptop’s display when I’m at home.
When I get around to upgrading (I’m waiting for a G5 laptop), I’ll have the ability to support three monitors, and I’ll probably get another 15" and make use of that capability at work. I’ve had 3 in the past (back when my main box was my PM-7100) and while the step up to 3 from 2 isn’t as vital and wonderful as to 2 up from just 1, yeah I found plenty of use for that third screen…
It’s also perfect for live, online trading. I just set up a friend who is doing it and it really helps to be able to split up your applications and various windows.