Two screens good
Friday, August 25, 2006
I’d read all the stuff about efficiency being improved by having more screen real-estate, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.
For some things (like graphic design) I could see the benefit - arrange your palettes and toolbars as you like, having a scratch pile of raw images or sketches off to one side, and then the main area you’re working in - less scrolling, less window shuffling.
But for other things, like article writing, I figured too much stuff going on would be a distraction. You just want to focus on one thing, right?
But I took the plunge and gerry-built a 2-screen solution for my Mac Mini using the unfortunately-titled Dual Head2Go.
While not officially-supporting Macs, I knew others had got it working, and in no time I’d rigged up an ugly combo of my nice white Samsung monitor, and a big old Dell flat-panel my wife’s architecture firm wasn’t using (we share an office).
But it works, and I love it. Turns out even the simple stuff is better - Mail on one screen, browser in the other, for example. Say goodby to alt-tabbing.
Even the writing is better. Most of the time I’m writing about websites, or linking to sites, or responding to mails, or in sonme other way referring to another screen while I write. Now there’s room to display my writing window (Normally TextWrangler - the BBEdit Lite for the new century) on one screen, and whatever I need to refer to on the other.
So I’m sold. And if I return to the laptop camp (as I hope to next year), I"ll just setup up the laptop beside one of the monitors and use an external keyboard and mouse - good job the MacBooks support spanning as well as mirroring.
Unless I’m really greedy, and try and run the three screens side by side. But that might be a bit mission control, even for me.