What size of monitor works best for you?

[ExcuseMyIgnorance]

I'm shopping for a new computer. I'll likely get a small laptop and use an external monitor at home. What size makes sense? My goal is to be as efficient as possible. At first I wanted two screens. I now think that's stupid and leads to distractions. I do want a screen large enough that I can research on one side of the screen and write on another (using two browsers slapped to each side of the screen).

19" is too small. I used a 27" monitor the other day but I think it slowed me down slightly because of how long it took to scroll. And yes, my mouse is fast. Thoughts? What are you using?

I don't care about money either. PRODUCTIVITY. THank you!

[cypher1]

What size makes sense? My goal is to be as efficient as possible. At first I wanted two screens. I now think that's stupid and leads to distractions. I do want a screen large enough that I can research on one side of the screen and write on another (using two browsers slapped to each side of the screen).

What makes sense depends on yours usage for the display.

I run two 24" LED monitors on my main desktop at home. I'm tempted to pick up another two similar size on my other system. At work I use three 22" LCDs on my main laptop docked, along with a 4th 19" on separate desktop. I need the real estate for the tools I use.

Interesting you think multiple spanned monitors usage is stupid, but yet you want a large enough screen to split whichever browser/windows to fit on that one display. However 27" is too large to scroll across? That seems like more work to constantly adjust the sizes imo.

[ua_guy]

I prefer something seemingly the size of a Midwest state. My monitor at home is a single panel 30" display. Good enough for home purposes, and when I work from home, it's adequate. I can also use my laptop screen as an extension when I need it.

At work, I have dual 22" displays which is pretty conservative given that I work in IT. A lot of guys at private companies have some ridiculous setups, 3 or 4 monitors going at the same time.

The scroll speed isn't an issue once you get used to it, but then again I use a lot of keyboard commands depending on what I'm doing, so I don't notice as much.

[LizfromtheBronx]

At work, I have a large widescreen monitor, and I keep my laptop docked and open. I use both screens. I work from home one day per week, and really miss the monitor when I do. When I move, and get a desk and all that stuff, I plan on getting a monitor for home and requesting an extra docking station so I can work much in the same way. (I'm eventually hoping for a telecommute 100% role).

[btctony]

I have four 22" monitors in my home office. Unless you're monitoring multiple applications, I can't imagine need more than that. I use one to display my surveillance camera video feeds and one to display a virtual machine that I use to remote into my work pc, so I'm really only using two for everyday tasks.

I have 3 computers in my office at work and the most I have on one pc is four. I could probably get by with three.

[BuckyBadger]

I use 2 ~24" screens at work. At home we only have laptops.

Works for me!

[hemoglobinRed]

Reply to thy

My advice, there are USB to xga/dvi/hdmi converters and docking stations. If you want to add more monitors later you can. For best results make sure your laptop has plenty of USB 3.0 ports. I've used these converters with USB 2.0 and have never noticed any frame lag when watching youtube.

Personally, I run 3 19" monitors. This is job specific: One for source code, one for documentation, one for debugging/console output. I got started using this setup because I never liked manually positioning and scaling windows. I wanted the simplicity of moving an application to a window and hitting maximize.

Of course windows has since added shortcuts that make positioning windows much easier. The windows button + left/right will instantly do the 50% side by side positioning the original poster mentioned.

[ExcuseMyIgnorance]

Now I have a lot to think about.

This is what I use each day:

Skype, Notepad, Word, Chrome, Excel, constantly pathing out to files, and sometimes I use a proprietary piece of software which I need a full screen to use.

I guess what I'd like is to be able to keep 20 tabs open at all times without having to constantly close them because I can't even see the favicon. Maybe what I need is better tab management skills.

How do you manage tabs? Or do you just close them a lot?

[hemoglobinRed]

Well there are shortcuts like alt+tab I always use.

favicon - meaning the taskbar? Mine does not hide, it is always visible.

I have it vertical and fairly wide on one of my screens with icons set to small. I haven't posted enough here yet to be allowed to post links, but there are several articles explaining the advantages of vertical task bars better than I'm about to. So use google if you really want to read them.

Because it is wide it can show plenty of titlebar text: names of folders, files, application names, etc are all fully displayed. I'm not guessing as to what I want.

Because it is vertical it presents one line of open applications. If it was horizontal searching through the list is like reading a paragraph in a book: at the end of a line your eyes have to do a carriage return and go the next line of open applications.