How much more productive are three monitors than two?

Question

I am mulling over whether to buy a new monitor, to go along side my current setup of two 24 (ish) inch monitors. What I want to know is whether this is worth the money (probably around £200)?

I think most of us will agree that two monitors is much more productive than one when programming and developing (Jeff Atwood has said this many times on his blog, and I imagine that most of you are fans of his), but is three much more productive than two? What I'm worried about is that I will have so much space that one monitor will be used for things that are not related to the task (music, facebook etc.) and it will actually make me less productive.

Answer 1

I have tried two and three monitor setups repeatedly over the last ten years. It's not for me: I've always returned to one monitor, set up in front of my face. I am very happy with this setup and Alt + Tab.

Answer 2

I'd say two monitors is ideal. You can't possibly comfortably look at more than two at the same time. If you need to keep changing your posture to look at your monitors, I don't think it's any more efficient than using virtual desktops.

Answer 3

I have four setup. It's too many. It started out as more of a cool thing to do and then eventually me and another guy had it setup. I find myself coding on one monitor and having the internet\docs on another. The one thing that is nice about 4 is that you can spread out your Visual Studio windows (i.e. Solution Explorer, Team Explorer, Test View, Pending Checkins) and always have them available at a glance.

I think I shoulda stopped at three...

Answer 4

I have two monitors at work and it is more productive than one but I must say that I use a Mac and a Pc in the same time(via VNC). Second monitor is very useful in my domain(games) because I often need space for Visual Studio, XCode and Photoshop in the same time.

Answer 5

I believe there's a large productivity boost when going from one monitor to two, and pretty much every piece of research on the matter agrees. However, I also believe that there are diminishing returns when going from two to three (or more). Not sure what the research says on that.

To me, the key to using multiple monitors depends on how many "modes" you typically work in. For example, most developers have modes for coding, communication, research, etc. Depending on the type of work you do, you might also have a "design" mode or want things like media/music players always accessible.

I use two large monitors and prefer to dedicate a primary monitor to my current mode - typically dev-related tasks. I use the secondary monitor for communication, so it's typically got Outlook, Skype, and Trillian on it. There's some extra space over there for reference material - I'll tear off a Chrome tab and place it over there with things like documentation, samples, etc. When I switch out of dev mode, it's typically for a longer period of time (like working on doc, dealing with spreadsheets, etc), so I just use all of those apps on the primary instead of dev apps.

Occasionally, I find it helpful to use "virtual desktops" when I am going to switch modes more frequently - but that's not typical. The main thing is recognizing that there's only one "active" mode at a time. Someone else answered that two is good because you can't look at more than two things at a time -- I'd argue you can't look at more than ONE thing at a time.

So for me, having a primary/main workspace and managing that is key, and then I use the secondary workspace for things that are intermittent and more transient in nature (media, communications, etc). If you have a lot of more transient tasks/apps that you use (or prefer to also have Twitter, Facebook, or video windows open as well), and you have the desk space for it, then I could see how a third monitor would be helpful -- I just wouldn't look for it to be as mind-blowing an upgrade as going to a second monitor was.

Answer 6

At work, I use two monitors on my desktop for development (generally, code on one screen, app on the other) and my laptop to the side with my email and IM clients. Then, I use Synergy to make it all controllable from the desktop.

I find it adds to productivity since I don't have to sacrifice real estate to glance at important or just-arrived emails, I don't get visually inundated with IM notifications if I'm focused, and I have the benefit of being able to simultaneously test our web-based stuff on two very differently-spec'd computers.

Answer 7

I have two monitors but I have them set up so that one has multiple virtual desktops and the other just has one. I can't imagine another monitor would be useful.

I tend to have one virtual desktop for email, one for development, one for documentation, etc., and use the other monitor for stuff that overlaps (say, I might be flicking back and forth between my code and docs desktops, with Bugzilla and svn log on the other monitor.

Answer 8

2 monitors definitely increase productivity. A monitor can never be large enough. The question is one large monitor or a dual monitor setup?

If you have the money. Go for a 30" in my opinion. It offers about 45% more resolution than a 24".

The problem is the toolbars and sidebars in most programs. The thing is you usually can't put them on a different screen practically. You want at least a 24" and a second (cheaper) monitor.

Answer 9

Go with three monitors and make sure that you have a specific role each monitor is going to play. I just started using three monitors instead of two recently, and my current setup gives me maximum productivity. Here it is

• Macbook Pro 17" as my primary display/machine
• 22" monitor attached as an external display to the MBP 17"
• Macbook Pro 15" as my secondary machine and third display.

I use software called teleport to control the MBP 15" from the MBP 17". For what it's worth, there is similar software that's non mac specific for this called Synergy.

My (typical) roles for these are as follows:

MBP 17" is for my IDE / VIM. This screen has the highest resolution of the three so I spend that resolution on the screen that I'm doing most of the work on.

The 22" monitor typically has a browser taking up approximately 2/3 of the screen and a terminal taking up 1/3 of the screen. The browser is for looking at docs (and stackoverflow.com :D ). The terminal is for any random thing I need it for.

The MBP 15" has my IRC client, Instant Messaging client (skype included), and Email client on it - it is basically my communication machine. This allows me to keep my development screens non cluttered with communication but have communication ready. If I also need to shut the rest of the world out to focus, I'll dim the display of the MBP 15" and turn the sound down a good bit.

Basically what this allows me to do is when I'm working on the MBP 17", I'm not tempted by anything that isn't work related when I cmd+tab. I leave my goofing off to a separate Spaces screen (use your desktop pager on a Linux machine) window on the MBP 15" so that's not in my face either.

As someone who gets easily distracted, I've found this is the best setup, since my eyes remain focused on where the real work needs to happen and I can ignore extraneous communication when needed and also not be tempted by any non necessary apps on my primary system. Whatever you do don't mix up the roles you have for your monitors.

Answer 10

My ideal setup would be about six monitors, 23" each at a minimum. (Three on the desk, three suspended from the ceiling on mechanical pivot arms.) I always have so many references open that I clutter my desktop three or four-layers deep with windows, even when I have dual monitors active. Looking back and forth seems like it would be a pain at first glance, but I usually have my desk piled high with books and notes so that it wouldn't change my existing workflow. It depends on how much you like to rely on research when you're coding, I guess.