Super Large Screens

• I’ve seen not one, but two posts today about multi-monitor/super large screens.

The first is from Scott Hanselman on multimonitor setups:

While I was at the Eleutian offices last week I was impressed at their commitment to the multi-monitor lifestyle. I’m all about the Third Monitor (in case you haven’t heard, it’s one better than just two monitors) as areothers. If you value your time, you should think about getting the widest view possible.

The Dell 30-inch is amazing…they each had a Dell 30″ widescreen at 2560×1600 pixels, but they also had what appeared to be two 22″ widescreen’s also, rotated and butted up against the 30″ so their horizontal working space was 1050+2560+1050=4660 pixels wide. Glorious. I turned them on to (I hope) RealtimeSoft’s must-have Ultramon multimonitor tool. They were running x64, and Ultramon has a 64-bit version, so that was cool.

And Simon Brocklehurst points to this cool video of  the most advanced multi-touch, super large monitor setup I have ever seen:

The point is – we’ve been used to the desktop metaphor for user interfaces for a long time now, but still the “desktops” on our computers are incredibly small compared to our real, physical desktops. If someone gave you a desk in your work place that was 24 inches across, you wouldn’t be able to get much work done on it. And yet, a 24 inch LCD screen is seen as an extravagant luxury by many. Lots of companies give their employees 15 inch “computer desktops” to work on.

You can see his point. I have a 19″ myself that suites me most of the time. But somtimes its just so small.

I’m wondering, considering Simon’s point why there is still a stigma attached to multi-monitor setups in the work place? Cost can be out-weighed many times by the productivity benefits and its actually an incentive for businesses to do that. Space is a concern, but the setup Scott saw dosen’t take up thatmuch space. So I’m wondering why. Perhaps is slightly too hard for the bosses to believe that having an extra monitor or to check your emails or have a reference to what you’re working on in front of you is beneficial. It seems like a large outlay for little perceived return. Ha! Question answered.  Its a crisis of perception.  

As my PC is at home, I’m wondering whether the outlay for a new moitor is justified (given that productivity is not an issue) ?