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Honestly when you have your own business and the roof over your head relies on being uber productive you very quickly winnow away affectations and get to the heart of what absolutely works and is required. If I was a cubicle jockey working for a big corporation I'm sure I'd have dozens of monitors if I could convince anyone to buy them for me. 
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
- Walter Bagehot
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Monitor 1;
* vs2008
Monitor 2;
* debug IE, other web content for researching problems, Outlook
Montor 3;
* Code Project, split screen between the lounge and soapbox.
MrPlankton
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Most of the developers in our shop have dual 20" monitors. I tried it for a little while and just couldn't get used to it; I still prefer one screen. My 17" one at home is plenty, too.
-CB
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I agree, and why are all the 'kids' all excited about this 'gooey', green text on a black background is all you need ... unless of course you want color and then you need a plotter.
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I never had two monitors until about a year ago.
I spend a lot of time in Remote Desktop, testing my stuff on various systems.
Having two monitors eased that quite a bit.
Unfortunately, I'm back to just the one monitor now. 
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Every person in our company has at least 2 lcds, some people have up 6, but we are a 'paperless' (mostly) company. Having two monitors cuts out many reasons for printing off documents for references.
And as others have mentioned with VS, you need to keep your app in the foreground so it doesn't repaint.
Another couple monitors would be nice though. So I can have the app I'm working on, vs, email and db windows all visible.
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GibbleCH wrote: Having two monitors cuts out many reasons for printing off documents for references.
Right because it's so hard to press alt-tab, why didn't I think of that!
No, don't get me wrong, if you work for another company and they are dumb enough to waste money on extra monitors..fill your boots, but when you work for yourself you will quickly lose all those affectations that cost money but do not add to productivity (quite the opposite as study after study has proven). Switching mental context is the most expensive operation a programmer can perform in daily work, doing it dozens of times every half hour to glance at stuff on other screens that is always in your field of view when you're supposed to be writing code is ruinously expensive for a small business, in a big corporation I guess they just eat the cost and don't bother to think about it.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
- Walter Bagehot
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Actually, yes, it is easy to Alt-Tab.
That does not mean it's efficient, or the average person will use it.
Especially if you're Alt-Tabing between more than two references. I frequently have to check an email or design doc for a change or spec, then check the database and object model, look at data returned by a webmethod, and code and debug.
It's not just a simple Alt-Tab. It's Alt-Tab-Tab-Tab, grab piece of info, Alt-Tab-Tab, grab piece of info, Alt-Tab-Tab...Tab-Tab. Make code change. Alt-Tab...Tab-Tab.
Or, so that I can quickly scan info, I end up printing all that off, and plastering around my monitor. And after a couple days, those references are outdated, as the data and object model have changed.
Wasted paper. Wasted money.
HR is even worse. Do you have any idea how many times they print the same persons resume? Each interviewer gets a copy, which they mark up during interviews, they have a clean copy they use as a reference with the candidate...then they have to share notes, photocopy, photocopy.
Accountants...oh brother.
A couple $100 for a second monitor pays for itself over and over in it's ~5 year lifecycle.
I loathe using a single monitor when I have the laptop on the road, I DO work slower as I'm stuck in an Alt-Tab nightmare trying to find the right window.
Changing context/focus only slows you down if you didn't need to change context...but if the information you require to continue is there, it's much faster if it's on the other monitor and you only have to shift your eyes.
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John, you seem to have attracted some serious haters Just about every post of yours I've seen in the last few days (week?) has had low votes! Who did you pour cold water on?
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
VCF Blog
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People don't like to have their comfortable and illogical conception of reality challenged on any level, I love challenging people's comfortable thoughtless reality. Simple as that.
In this particular context, as a small business person I can't afford those kind of affectations and I've learned what works in the trenches with extremely low budget and no time to waste a microsecond on anything that doesn't work. I continually challenge everything I do and how I do it, I re-examine and get what I need and what works and measure the results to ensure it's working. Having been somewhat successful in my business applying these reality based methods of working I foolishly think people will have the balls to challenge their own preconceived assumptions and really think about how they do things but most prefer to live in a dreamy haze, the opiate of easy careless assumptions and the "common knowledge" of the herd and vote me down instead.
As for the voting system, I was against it when it first came in because I assumed everyone would start talking about the voting instead of having actual discussions and would become lazy and just vote up or down instead of posting a meaningful reply which seems to have firmly come to pass and is probably why most message boards online do *not* have a voting system if they want to foster any meaningful discussion.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
- Walter Bagehot
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John C wrote: any meaningful discussion.
I thought that's what the Soapbox was for...
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
VCF Blog
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I used to work with 4x19" (mounted in a rectangle) and am now relegated to a 24". My personal preference is 3-4 19" monitors, but I could envision better scenarios.
There are lots of good reasons to have multiple monitors. There are also lots of ways to misuse multiple monitors via excessive context switching. But bad habits are bad habits with 1, 2 or 4 monitors.
Let's talk about good reasons:
- Larger canvas space.
More space to work allows for more available information. If you're in a code window you get more code at one, if you're checking out data output from a query, you see more results, this is important stuff.
- Better data separation.
Do you have a company dashboard? Anything to keep track of the "health" of the system, the build, the production servers? If you don't, why not? If you do, where does it go? In a 3 or 4 monitor setup is goes into the periphery. Without the extra monitors it basically goes nowhere.
Do you do DB development and coding? Do you use extra tools? In my 4 monitor setup I had 1 monitor for the SQL Management Studio, 1 monitor for VS code and 1 monitor for VS toolbars. The last monitor? Dashboard, web searches, help files, etc.
- Separate computers.
If you're doing admin work using Remote Desktop or you're doing testing with Virtual PC, having multiple monitors is indispensable. Our sys admin typically switches between a couple of servers and multiple monitors is invaluable for keeping everything organized.
Some links:
Coding Horror[^]
Scott Hanselman[^]
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