Dual Monitors: Help Me Understand the Appeal

Do you users of dual monitors understand that you can have a single monitor with 10+ windows, each of which has automatically configured tiled windows?

Given that, I don't see the utility, and from an aesthetic standpoint it's far inferior.

Further, I doubt it's quicker to rotate my head 60 degrees than it is to push ctrl+x and change workstations. So the argument of increased productivity is out the window (heh) if you aren't ignorant to workspaces.

I like to be able to physical dock a full screen window to one more monitor, or be able to play a game on one, and do something else on another

1 TN monitor for gaymen and 1 VA monitor for anime/browser

>i is a positive integer. I don't see the appeal of having 2i things.

You're right. You probably wouldn't receive any benefit.

>but muh vidya
ok you guys clearly aren't the demographic I'm aiming for here, I'm trying to ask the diehard productivity gurus who swear by multiple monitors.

I have 2shitty 19" monitors side by side at work, if they gave me 1 27" I'd be happy

photoshop on one monitor, tutorial on the other

vidya on one monitor, music/discord on the other

afterfx/premier/vegas/ect on one, fullscreen preview on another

Benchmark on one monitor, temp/clocks/voltage on the other

right now I've got Sup Forums on one monitor and youtube on the other


You understand taht you can have two monitors with 10 windows each, increasing the amount of real estate you can use to fit crap onto the screen? Like really you can have raw data open in multiple windows on one monitor, and then excel open on the other and be able to fill in cells without ever having to minimize excel or zoom/scroll around the spreadsheet, not to mention you don't have to fill monitors.

this is an absolutely terrible argument and you know it

I use dual at home, and trip at work. It's a must have.

why not just tile the windows and/or split the one vs the other into two windows? I've got firefox in one workspace, and a tiled racket programming env spread across two more workspaces.

How is AIM Specialty Health?

Unless you have like a 40" 4k monitor its really not that viable to do such a thing because shit starts to get real small when you try to cram that many windows on a single monitor. And considering that most monitors are below 30" its just cheaper and easier to use two monitors than get a huge one and divide up all of your windows. Also one big monitor isn't going to give you the effective width that you get from having two monitors next to each other.

Just look at how cramped this shit is, and this is on my 2560x1440 27" monitor

Now compare to how much real estate two monitors gives me, I mean shit you couldn't even see the cock cumming in the single monitor scenario, and with another half of the screen free not taken up by photoshop I can fit even more crap than I could before, while still getting the full resolution out of my main monitor

>I can't afford to buy a second monitor, therefore noone should have one

t. OP

Watch movie on one screen.
Browse on other screen.

OR

Research on one screen.
Write on one screen.

OR

etc.

Virtual desktops are great for keeping things separate, like work and play. When you want to do multiple things at the same time or switch between them on the fly, dual monitors are superior.

>move playlist to a diff workspace
>zoom out cock and/or resize window and/or tile horizontally
>???
>profit

that was ez

kill yourself

>movie and browse
you don't watch movies right if you browse while watching, and tiling vertically would be an ez pz alternative

>research and write
I do this all the time, browser / pdf tiled horizontally, with the bottom 20% of the screen a text document

it was an obvious solution

One monitor in landscape for whatever you're working on and the second one in portrait orientation for reading documentation.

It's fucking fantastic and I'll never go back.

>he fully rotates the head
What you got, a ping pong sized head than your field of view is so small? I merely need to move the eyes a few degree

More room for activities, dumbass

At least buy two monitors of the same size, jees

>I'm trying to ask the diehard productivity gurus

>you can have a single monitor with 10+ windows

yeas, so you can have 20+ windows on dual monitors.
also it's comfy

this really begs the question
what benefit does using one monitor over two have aside from cost and your personal sense of aesthetics?
I use two monitors because it's faster and more natural to me to have something open in another monitor than to switch workstations.
Not sure how to explain it but when switching workstations I have to mentally switch mindsets to remember what I was doing.
Having something on the second monitor I can mentally transition faster since it's more physically there in front of me.
It's like how you read better from a physical book than from a screen. Or maybe that's just me.

As to why not just have multiple things open on the same screen, things just get too small to read and I find myself squinting at the screen

I might fit the bill then, OP. I have two 24" 1080p monitors side by side on my desk, and I produce videos for a living.

Having the second monitor for the video preview and other programs for reference (Word, Firefox, whatever) makes it significantly faster and more intuitive, if that's the right word, than just having one screen.

Yeah I *can* work on just one screen, but it's slower and more distracting because of constantly minimizing/maximizing windows. I know you can just click windows+up or windows+down to do it with a keystroke, but it's still distracting. Plus it's much more convenient when I need to copy text or retype something from one window to another; have the source document on one screen, destination document on the other, and I can read what I'm typing without having to drag the destination window out of the way.

The main thing is having the video preview on the second monitor. It *really* crowds the workspace if you jam it into the main window, and leaves little room for the file browser or the timeline, or both.

this pretty much sums up my poor explanation here

here

The other thing I forgot to mention is that Windows 10's tiling is... marginal, at best. It works alright for 2 windows (side by side, easy enough) but once you get to 3 or more it just fucks up hard.

... and now that I say that, I just figured out that it actually can tile 4 windows into the corners. Never used the windows key to try and do that, only right click taskbar -> tile windows (which just fucks it up).

That said, it still feels really unnatural and I don't like having such a small workspace. Pic related.

Honestly one monitor landscape and the other portrait is really fucking spiffy. I feel like it'd be much better with an IPS as the portrait screen because of viewing angles, but being able to see (basically) two pages of a PDF or Word doc or whatever vertically makes reading more natural. Yeah you can do side-by-side pages, but vertical just feels better.

Then buy an ultrawide
By the sounds of it they're marketed directly at you.
Personally I like having a physical seperation between workspaces but that's simply personal preference

>ytmnd soundtrack

ahh the fads live on in all of us

It's clear that you don't do any real work, so it probably wouldn't benefit you.

I use my laptop as a secondary monitor at work. Literally the only thing I use it for is slack, everything else I do on a single monitor which I have no trouble with.

I'll say I don't see the point in going beyond two with virtual desktops being a thing.
Can you recommend any tips for getting a good monitor for portrait? I have two normal 1080p monitors and windows 10, is the screen orientation handled completely on the software side of things? Do I just need to get a vertical mount? And can you recommend a good vertical mount? I'm looking for this for reading, programming, IRC, Sup Forums, and general window dump area. Honestly two landscape widescreen monitors takes up too much space.

Not him but take some advice, you'll probably want a smaller monitor than you think. I have two 25" monitors and they're goddamn towers in landscape mode. It's like they magically grow in size when pivoting.

Oh and for your other question, yes it's completely handled in the software side. If you get a monitor that can pivot you won't need a mount.

>ping pong sized head
yes, it's terribly embarrassing.

I very rarely use even 5 of the workspaces, 20+ is excessive

>mentally switch mindsets
I can resonate with this, but often when I'm in a flow I seamlessly bounce between 5 or more workspaces. As you mention, it's all preference, but I can't help but feel they're a bit overhyped and that the minimalism of one monitor and the desk space / lack of clutter in front of my eyes it allows are understated.

You're a posterchild of someone that really reaps the benefits of it I suppose. I am not, as I mainly just use my machine for browsing, programming, viewing pdfs and music (both development and listening). Of course it's all preference and any vehemence I implied are in jest and satire, as is the nature of this mongolian basket weaving forum we find ourselves on.

I just get sick of seeing the "increased productivity" meme spewed around - especially when it's 'proven' by """""studies"""""" (where most participants likely use no tiling OR workspaces), and I think the only real advantage (besides niche use cases of improved comfort that you and mention) comes down to split second differences of eye vs hand speed (and those few milliseconds are nothing at the end of the day when considered with the myriad of other personal factors like personal diligence, focus, proclivity toward distractions [which is what I mainly see dual monitors being used for], etc).

Fug, I might just rig my monitor to be vertical as is with some sort of board or something. My monitors are 23 and 22 inches so I don't think it will be THAT bad. Maybe it will though, I don't know.

Nevermind I just tried tipping my monitor sideways and it grew 7 inches in length.

yeah I'm excluding windows users from this debate, it's almost exclusively more advanced linux users that this debate is intended for.

I think I'm currently using one, idk. I just bought a cheap HDMI monitor recently, it's probably 24x16 or so but it fits my needs perfectly.

nice arguement

I see you're a fellow man of culture, utility and aesthetics.

Aha see what I mean? If you have a setup like this it would be too bad - however this would require vesa mount support and the mounts themselves

I use one 43" 4k monitor at 100% zoom.

>You're a posterchild of someone that really reaps the benefits of it I suppose.

Totally agreed. Very few people would have a tangible benefit from having two screens, I'm sure about 99% of people just bought a second monitor because "it'd be cool" and they'd feel like Batman.

Buuuut having a triple monitor setup for vidya gaems would be really fun. Useless from a productivity standpoint, but really fun. Even just dragging Just Cause 3 across both screens was pretty sweet, I

tempted to get something 40"+ as well

Dual monitors is for being able to do a 85/15 and 65/35 split multitasking. An example of the former is when you're 85% focused on like programming and 15% focused on IRC/Discord/Whatever for contact/discussion. Or when you need to look at documentation while programming. An example of the later is like 65% focused on grinding in an MMO and 35% focused on watching a show.

I think they make sense for specific jobs, like day traders or photographers. But for programmers, I don't buy it, at least not for having documentation open all the time. Switching windows to look at documentation is no less efficient than having a second monitor. If a second monitor is useful to a programmer, it's for having more space for your app when you have a debugger running.

>I can't imagine anything working differently than it does inside my tiny bubble of experience
great thread

I think it's more about the fact that humans naturally scan horizontally for information. We look side to side very naturally, and changing out attention vertically feels more awkward. So if you take two programs optimized to be used (as most are) wider than they are tall, and reshape them to fit a single monitor you either go side by side which feels wrong and uncomfortable, or stacked which also messes with the feel but also makes you scan up and down. The only way to keep a two programs in their intended aspect ratios is to quarter them in size, which is poor use of the monitor. In the end if all programs were optimized to be run as squares then this wouldn't be an issue. But as it is, adding width without height is most beneficial.

When I'm programming/designing/whatever, I like to have my development environment on one monitor, with whatever information/reference material on the other so that I can simply glance over while I work. In most cases I simply can't stand having to tab back and forth.

why the FUCK would i want to see my goddamn playlist
it just fucking plays music, it's not supposed to show you the weather, news, and highlights of the fucking day
if i wanted that i'd go watch a fucking television

If you want a good amount of PPI you need multiple high resolution displays. Furthermore if your needs fluctuate or increase adding/removing monitors is significantly easier and more cost effective than swapping out one big one.

If you work in media or design dual monitors help a ton.

>Batman
This is the demographic I'm aiming to have a dialogue with, the l33t Batman / psuedo productivity guru.

>dual monitors is for
no, that's just your opinion. People can buy them for whatever they want, and use them in the same manner. To say they are 'for' your meme split is incredibly silly.

You can achieve the same split with workspaces. I do exactly this with a script a run that goes off anywhere after 25 minutes (I set it for varying times, depending on how long I'm able to maintain focus) to notify me that it's time for 5 minutes of slacking.

I have a workspace dedicated to daytrading, where I have several charts tiled up neatly and another workspace for development and tweaking of algobots so I don't particularly buy it in this sense either, especially in this day and age when you can set up your machines to give you a notification when a price threshold is reached on any given stock/crypto/etc.\, so you don't even have to watch charts, but it is /comfy/ to do so. And the biggest proponents of duals and their productivity seem to be programmers, which I particularly disagree with.

>dedicated to daytrading
There goes the credibility...

great contribution and misunderstanding of the OP, mr shit reading comprehension

By utilizing workspaces you don't change your attention horizontally or vertically.

It seems silly, imo, to buy a whole new monitor just because tabbing isn't comfy for you (yet)

fuck off it's comfy, it's not like I daytrade my whole portfolio anyway

Touchy

>By utilizing workspaces you don't change your attention horizontally or vertically.
There's a limit to this though and once you pass that things feel crowded in an unnatural way. Sometimes you have to change your attention, and when you do, horizontally is more natural for human vision.

he mentioned daytrading, and it had no reason to lower my credibility. further, if you think me telling to fuck off is me being "touchy", I invite you, formally, to go back.

Orientation is handled by the software.

Personally, I use a vsa dual monitor stand (pic related) with arms that adjust/rotate and I just spun my secondary monitor 90 degrees. I prefer the kind of moint that sits on my desk rather than clamping to the back because they seem more sturdy. You'll have to determine what will work the best for you/your desk, though. Ergotron is a good brand but can be pricey. Honestly the best thing to do is just use Amazon and organize by best rating and then check YouTube for reviews.

you are retarded op, you cant do fucking half measures when working on something, you have to have all the surface area possible to place all your shit, your shitty "just squeeze in 3 windows on one monitor" solution is retarded and if you ever worked on something you would know it. Have you ever seen a nasa control room? How would you feel about using only 1/3 of your notebook area? why not just ditch half of your monitor space and gouge out one of your eyeballs out while youre at it? Fuck you you retard, if this is bait then its the best bait ive ever seen.

>if this is bait then its the best bait ive ever seen
I don't think I've ever been so complimented on here before, thank you user - truly.

NASA is clearly an exception though you mongoloid.

>It seems silly, imo, to buy a whole new monitor just because tabbing isn't comfy for you (yet)
I used to only have one monitor and tabbed through windows. Then I bought a second one and window management became so much easier.
Considering that monitors are pretty cheap, if it improves your computer experience I would recommend buying a second one.
Now if you just want to be batman like some people have mentioned in thus thread then just stick to one.
I typically almost always have more than 3 windows open so it's helpful for me.

2560x 1440 horizontal
1920x1200 vertical

I use quad monitors, thin bezel so almost no obtrusive gap, and they are curved around me, can't do that with modern curved screens and it would have to be like 50 inches around me

Helps further compartmentalize whatever you're doing and what you plan to do. I don't think its good for doing things like games or presentations but it is nice for half watching a movie or something while you type stuff in something on the other monitor. It's also a little faster to drag something onto the other monitor than it is to fuss around with resizing windows that were intended to take up the whole screen.

There's nothing wrong with it of course, but I too have over 3 windows open at all times, and find the minimalism of a single monitor much more appealing than the bulk of an added monitor. But that's just me. I was partially curious to know if dual monitor Batman boys even knew that workspaces and virtual desktops existed, as well as tiling, and if they had tried it. Part of me feels that many users (particularly window's users) likely don't know about existing alternatives that WM's like i3 provide.

I used to run 4 screens, then I went back to 3, then back to 2 and now I only have one big screen.

I used to prefer different screens for different themes. Usually my right side window had my messaging applications open, namely IRC, discord and whatever I would use at the time. Usually just 3 windows because my side screens were shitty full HD panels. My other screen would have the music player and possible hardware monitors on all the time, and when I had a fourth screen, it would be a free desktop, a kind of 100% available workspace. Main screen obviously for main activity.

Then I just bought a 43" 4K display, which is so big that I don't have to scale anything. It's like a totally different way to use a computer, I can have everything open at the same time and I don't need to run anything full screen. I fucking love it. It's kind of what people got to do with Apple computers but this is just better.

>lmao why would you want more screen real estate when you could have less instead

I'm less jealous of your monitor than I am of your room that you presumably have to yourself that is properly encapsulated for audio recording/streaming and your programmable keypad. Your actual keyboard and mouse are fucking gay though.

>lmao why you would want more desk space, money and pussy when you can have less instead

My monitors are all mounted

I have a big desk and a lot of money
I don't have a cat though.

I cant believe that anyone is arrogant and stupid enough to argue AGAINST multiple monitors. This thread is clearly bait. And if not? You're a fucking arrogant retard and deserve to be decapitated because your lack of cognitive ability is literally holding back evolution as we type. Kill yourself.

I cant believe that anyone is arrogant and stupid enough to argue AGAINST my opinion. This comment is clearly bait. And if not? You're a fucking arrogant retard and deserve to be decapitated because your surplus of monitors is literally holding back evolution as we type. Kill yourself.

Dual books: help me understand

>Do people that read in one book and write in another not understand that you can stack on book on top of another?

>Furthermore, I'd rather not turn my head (or even eyes) to quick glance something instead of easily stopping what in doing, pull one book out from the other, absorb the information, then pull the first book back to the top? It's clearly more efficient and productive. Looks like we've really closed the book (heh) on this "quick accessible information paradigm" if you aren't ignorant to stacking items.

Vertical master race here.
This only acceptable way to have a comfy dual monitor.

Double productivity. They are for people that use computers for actual work. I have had customers report 30% increases in employee productivity when I have switched them to dual monitor systems. When asked what would help their people work better, my answer is always ssd drives and dual monitors.

I have enough going on daily that three is barely enough. We are talking five to ten remote sessions, email, chat, crm, notepad/word/Excel, rmm, and password manager.

>workspaces
>virtual desktops
Somewhat irrelevant IMO, you're still having to switch between two or more of something instead of being able to view multiple things simultaneously.

I have two different machines, so I have two keyboards and mice because I hate KVM switches.

Having a 4k monitor now makes using one monitor on one machine a lot more feasible, but I don't really have a problem just using workspaces.

I have 3, don't be an idiot. If you can't multitask I get it, but having remote PCs/Servers or software (photoshop, email, whatever) and internet music or whatever you want on another? That's why I have 3, add youtube, security cameras, radio software, doing one monitor and annoying shit res splitscreen sucks.

Somebody doesn’t actually use their computer as a means of income.

Feels good looking at my 3 monitors making 6 figures programming from home.

So how about an example of that awesome monitor with, I don't know, those programs all open.
>sing the virtues of a giant single monitor for multitasking
>post pic of desktop wallpaper

That, sir, is an abomination

you'd make just as much if you had but one

they aren't irrelevant at all retard, they are the subject of this discourse

i play sc2, i'm a multitasking god. my res is fine, and tiled windows are comfy

he's a windows user, what did you expect

I don't want a monolithic display with a single ugly as fuck and cluttered workspace crowded with a bunch of tiny as shit tiled windows that I have to dedicate more subconscious effort to managing when I have a much more enjoyable time using two panels, each dedicated to one or two applications at a time managed with a simple virtual desktop model.

I have a desk with more than a square foot of surface area.

1 display for Excel, 1 web based cms and or mail client.
Or
2 displays for vector graphics.
Its simply necessary when you have to consider big amounts of data at the same time.

You do it your way, but if you ever start working for real you'll go for a multi disply setup.

Most people start off with 1 monitor then simply add another, very few people begin with enough money to have their monitor included in the initial budget as it's a secondary thing that you can add on later, a PC build won't work if you just don't buy a GPU, or if you spend $200 less on a GPU you can't just add on $200 worth of GPU.

Silly

...

One time I built a triple monitor system by dumpster diving behind the dorms after people moved out.

Triple monitor at home and work
Work (2 landscape 1 portrait) : Email on one, work on one, chat/browser on one
Home (1 landscape 2 portrait) : chat on one, spotify on one, play/browse on one

I use a 28" 4k monitor at 100% scaling too.

having to constantly tab out of a photo and video you're editing to work on the other is quite annoying.

>This is the demographic I'm aiming to have a dialogue with, the l33t Batman / psuedo productivity guru.
>I want reasoning from people with dual monitors
>But only from people that I think don't need them, who actually benefits from them doesn't count

OP, have you ever used 2 screens? I've never heard of someone wanting to go back to 1 screen after using 2 screens.
A simple example of the productivity of two screens is a document on your main screen and reference material on the other screen.

You don't want to use both screens like your pic shows, that's just useful if you need a large resolution to see an entire picture/model/document all at once.

Another example of two screens would be having Amazon on your main screen and Newegg on your second screen. Or you can have IRC on one screen and your coding project on the other screen.

Yes, you can do all these things with one screen, but you need a large screen to do this, and you lose screen space to the edges/bezels that windows have.

Tiling managers alleviate this space lost to window edges, but those are something you didn't mention so I won't mention them anymore.

To anyone reading this, the takeaway is that you really have to try using 2 screens before you say it's not a big improvement.

>hurrr when u do real work you'll see
This simply isn't true, mamy prefer a single monitor and you're retarded if you can't see it's just preference

It's like you honestly don't know what a workspace is, yet bothered to reply

This is sensible though, is eager 99% of people on here would be just as productive on a single monitor. Those involved with extensively heavy screen real estate as in media, security monitoring etc are clear exceptions to the rule, retard

Have u tried tiling?