Why buy one when you can get two for twice the price?

[Memnon]

Gnome has two desktops on one monitor, and I find that if I enable top-right notifications from pidgin and rhythmbox, then I can switch screens pretty easily after someone signs in and so on. Of course, it doesn't work with a full-screen app, so I can't play a full screen game and talk at the same time. It's pretty intuitive, all in all, and a definite improvement to the setup I had on XP. So that's kinda like a dual monitor setup, ish.

[Spyder]

Gnome has two desktops on one monitor, and I find that if I enable top-right notifications from pidgin and rhythmbox, then I can switch screens pretty easily after someone signs in and so on. Of course, it doesn't work with a full-screen app, so I can't play a full screen game and talk at the same time. It's pretty intuitive, all in all, and a definite improvement to the setup I had on XP. So that's kinda like a dual monitor setup, ish.

That's like the opposite of dual monitors.

[Edi]

I wish I had two monitors at work too. I have a 19 inch monitor and routinely run 20+ applications as part of the normal workload and even though most of them are browser based, having the extra screen would help with the division of tasks and allow more info to show. We're getting a dual setup later, but no idea just how much later.

At home I have a single 24 inch monitor. Not enough room for a second and no need either. Splitting email and browser roughly half and half works quite well and for writing, a full screen of Open Office Writer allows me to view two pages side by side, which is quite adequate for my needs.

[Memnon]

Gnome has two desktops on one monitor, and I find that if I enable top-right notifications from pidgin and rhythmbox, then I can switch screens pretty easily after someone signs in and so on. Of course, it doesn't work with a full-screen app, so I can't play a full screen game and talk at the same time. It's pretty intuitive, all in all, and a definite improvement to the setup I had on XP. So that's kinda like a dual monitor setup, ish.

That's like the opposite of dual monitors.

It's like a software implementation of two monitors. Or so my thinking goes.

[phongn]

That's called a virtual desktop and it's been around in UNIX-land for a long time.

[madd0ct0r]

I've recently gone two monitors at home after using them at work.

I haven't really enough experience to report on them yet, but in the past I've found it key for when I'm codeing (or running a large structual model, say of a bridge), cross referencing data from reports, using (or writing) a multiple sheet excel file, or multiple views of a 3d model at once.

I think it's because I sit quite far back from the computer, I don't have to turn my head to see either screen. The smaller secondry monitor folds up against the main one when I'm not using it so the desk space ain't an issue. For symetry I'm considering adding a document holder arm to the other side, for holding paper notes/reports that I need to cross ref too.

[Mr Flibble]

I first used dual monitors at my previous work. It was incredibly useful as we could have one screen devoted to a map view and the other for the interpretation work that we did, or for cross-section views. Because we wanted the map view to be as large as possible dual screening was essential for what we were doing, in fact if anyone had a monitor fail they were assigned other non standard tasks until it was fixed.

Liking the dual monitor set up I also adopted it at home, using two 24inch monitors. This was an extravagance at the time, but I'm now very grateful as I will be using that setup to do geophysical modelling for some contract work and once again dual monitors will be extremely useful.

For personal use I like to have a dvd running at the same time as I'm gaming, and the two 24s work very nicely for that. It is also fun to play civ2: test of time and stretch the map across both screens and view a maissive area of the map. I find it quite hard to go back to a single monitor setup now.

[Vertigo1]

I've been using dual monitors for the last six years, and I absolutely cannot stand to work on a machine with just one. I currently have a 22" Samsung (223BW) as my primary, and a 17" that originally came paired with my grandfather's old Compaq as my secondary. I throw Miranda IM, Winamp, mIRC, Teamspeak, etc onto the secondary, and run everything else on my primary. I also use the secondary for photo refs if I'm working on something in 3dsmax.

[salm]

I´ve been using dual monitors for a couple of years now and i´d hate to go back. Having a free monitor for reference images and Firefox as well as user manuals and help files (in an age where printed manuals are rare) is extremely usefull. I had one monitor break down a while ago and was only able to work with one for some time until it was replaced. It´s vastly less efficient for the type of work i do to have only a single monitor.