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Dual Monitor Setup vs. Single Screen Display

15 Responses (Add) | Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 8:15pm


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http://live.pirillo.com/ – A multi-monitor setup can give you much more screen real estate to work with, but so can one really huge monitor. Glenn wants to know if he should get two 23 inch monitors or one 30 inch monitor.

If there’s one absolute fact in this work it’s that Chris loves having a lot of screen real estate in front of him.

With two 23 inch monitors, you’ll actually get more space to work with than with just a single 30 inch monitor. Having a second monitor can help you be much more productive than you could be with just a single monitor, since you have more space to work with. Plus you have the added bonus of redundancy: if a monitor fails in a dual monitor setup you still have one monitor to fall back on.

It’s for these reasons that Chris recommends getting the two 23 inch monitors over the single 20 inch display.

You’ll need a couple of things in order to take full advantage of your monitors:

  • You’ll need a graphics card with "dual head" output support. Most modern graphics cards have this ability, but you should double check to make sure.
  • The combined resolution of your monitors cannot exceed the maximum resolution of your video card, otherwise you’ll need to purchase; for example, if your video card supports a maximum resolution of 1600×1200, but both of your monitors display 1600×1200, you’ll need a second video card to get the most out of your monitors.

Do you have any monitor recommendations?

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15 Comments

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January 7th, 2008
at 4:50am

<< Previous 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 Next >> 1 – 10 of about 131000. Search took 0.115025 seconds.Dual Monitor Setup vs. Single Screen Display ~ Chris PirilloSomeone who goes by the handle “imafrayedknot” left a comment for my Dual Monitor vs Single Screen video: Productivity is about more than just the brute … http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/05/25/dual-monitor-setup-vs-single-screen-display/ – 59k -

Windows Fanatics

June 1st, 2007
at 1:37am

Dual Monitor vs Single Screen video

Andres Villalon

May 26th, 2007
at 11:47am

Chris:
Check out “MaxiVista” at http://www.maxivista.com, all you need is two computers and two monitors, then you can utilize the other monitor as your main computer monitor. You can buy it for $29.95.

I use it and I am very happy with it.

Dan

May 26th, 2007
at 8:00pm

I’ll ditto the MaxiVista setup; it is an excellent program.

Dan

May 26th, 2007
at 8:00pm

I’ll ditto the MaxiVista setup; it is an excellent program.

Palmerized

May 27th, 2007
at 8:35pm

I prefer two monitors (both DVI if possible)… you’ll get more space in terms of pixels if you went with dual 23’s vs one 30″.

One other reason I prefer two displays is because I can tilt them towards me. The width of a 30″ display is massive, and I need to really turn my head to see the sides of the screen.

Palmerized

May 27th, 2007
at 8:35pm

I prefer two monitors (both DVI if possible)… you’ll get more space in terms of pixels if you went with dual 23’s vs one 30″.

One other reason I prefer two displays is because I can tilt them towards me. The width of a 30″ display is massive, and I need to really turn my head to see the sides of the screen.

JoeT

May 28th, 2007
at 8:16am

I have a dual-head setup running Semik’s Desktop on the main (21″ 1280×1024) monitor with a sticky Opera window on the other (17″ 1024×768). Works for me. I can switch desktops while keeping a web page handy for reference, or drag a window onto the lower res monitor to get some instant magnification.

Dual Monitor Display Increases Productivity | Bid to Win Auctions

June 6th, 2007
at 11:15am

[...] Someone who goes by the handle “imafrayedknot” left a comment for my Dual Monitor vs Single Screen video: Productivity is about more than just the brute number of pixels. Using multiple monitors allows me to efficiently organize my desktop resources by using each screen as a partition. I use this triple monitor display. [...]

Dual Monitor Display Increases Productivity | Bid to Win Auctions

June 6th, 2007
at 11:15am

[...] Someone who goes by the handle “imafrayedknot” left a comment for my Dual Monitor vs Single Screen video: Productivity is about more than just the brute number of pixels. Using multiple monitors allows me to efficiently organize my desktop resources by using each screen as a partition. I use this triple monitor display. [...]

martin

September 8th, 2007
at 5:27am

I´ve got laptop HP530 and Vista….there is no possibility to have 2 displays on 1 monitor. Just part the monitor into 2 displays…don´t you know ?

Ken W Sinclair

February 9th, 2008
at 1:04pm

My two monitor setup seems to work perfectly, but I am not able to have two websites open at the same time, for example, a website and a weblog, or wiki.
What am I missing, is it something simple?
Ken

Philip

January 30th, 2009
at 10:24am

I’m running a tri-monitor setup in a project studio where I work off two of the displays and the third one feeds through an extension cable into a vocal booth. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a pain once you drag one window (in my case mixer LED’s, video) into the vocal booth you can’t get it back if you can’t see the other monitor. So far no luck finding a utility that will allow previews of the contents of all the screens from one of the displays to enable easy drag and drop from an “unseen” display to one that is.

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