Larger Monitors and Productivity go Hand in Hand
10.12.06 - 10:30pm
I was just browsing through the Internet earlier today and an article on Macworld caught my eye, “Could a 30-in. monitor help you do your job faster?”. I thought that it was common knowledge that larger monitors and more workspace equates to a higher productivity but apparently this idea isn’t as common as I was lead to believe. From my own personal experience using a variety of monitors I must say that yes, more screen space will help productivity but there is a point of diminishing returns. Where this point lies depends on a lot of factors including the task at hand, the cost, and the user.
The Macworld article cites a survey funded by Apple to compare the 30″ Apple Cinema Display to a 17″ Samsung SyncMaster. The survey mentions how there were significant productivity gains peaking between 50% and 65% in some activities such as Excel, photo manipulation, and moving files within a file system. It is great that a survey was actually performed on this topic however there is a gaping hole in their survey. Companies tend to operate on slim margins and internal improvements need to bring the greatest bang for the buck and a 30″ ACD is not the way to go. Consider the costs associated with purchasing three individual setups, a single 30″ ACD will run you $1999, a single 17″ SyncMaster with run you roughly $250, and dual 17″ SyncMasters go for $500, a quarter of the cost of a 30″ ACD. By providing nearly the same combined resolution at a quarter of the cost, economically it is more viable to go with dual monitors rather than a single large panel. However cost isn’t the only issue at hand, how about usability within the workplace?
I myself have never used a 30″ monitor for a long duration however I have had the chance to play around with them in displays and also use dual 24″ setups. With a dual monitor setup users can separate applications and easily focus on a more user friendly sized area. I personally owned a dual 17″ LCD setup and I considered it superior to 20″ widescreens, 24″ widescreens, and even 30″ widescreens. There is something about being able to have applications blown up to a “full screen” and being able to drag material between screens and at times focus on one particular screen. When using 30″ screens the lack of separation and the time spent re-adjusting windows can be rather frustrating as maximizing a window will cause it to expand to the size of the screen which is very useless. Most activities that I can think of would rarely benefit from a single large display over twin smaller displays. Besides editing photos within Photoshop and possibly working on large Excel sheets, what other activities do enormous screens benefit? Perhaps I am missing some obvious point but I don’t seen a sane reason why someone would recommend a 30″ screen over something more useable, such as twin 20″ screens. One little issue I’ve also had with 30″ screens is the strain they seem to inflict upon my eyeballs. Something about using such a large screen causes me to strain my eyes, every-time I walk away the world seems out of focus.
Perhaps I am biased, perhaps I am simply stuck in my ways, but no matter what I find it hard to believe that a 30″ widescreen would be a sound investment for most companies and people. Let me know what you guys think, feel free to voice your opinions. What setups do you guys run, what would you prefer? Would you take a 30″ over twin 20’s or would you rather stick with your 15″ CRT? Do you use your monitor for watching movies, do you only play video games? Let’s hear your thoughts on this one. I personally would rather have 2 20″ widescreens with the ability to rotate them vertically for web browsing and writing large text documents. By having twin screens it also gives me the ability to turn one off if I need to focus on a specific task such as writing or researching.
I thought the widescreen pictures added a nice touch but on reflection they look huge. Either way I am accepting donations to purchase either of the above ;)I’d love to hear what you guys have to say about this topic.
I use dual 19’s at work - definitely more productive.
Yeah, I’d take two 20s over a 30 any day
I’m an accountant and use spreadsheets constantly (at work and at home) and I prefer one large monitor. I’m not using several different programs at once, I’m mainly using one and like to keep my eyes on one monitor instead of going back and forth between two. At home, I’ll fire up a spreadsheet on a 24 inch screen and keep a small window of a movie or TV show playing and it’s perfect.
However, when I do need to take info from one spreadsheet to another, I have to split the screen (on 24 inches, it’s not a big deal but on the 17 inch at work…it’s horrible) and that’s probably where I could see the benefit of two monitors.
I have to disagree about the fullscreen comment. I have a 24″ and a 19″ (vertical) as seen here. I use GridMove and it allows me to make templates for organizing windows on my screen. I can just drag and drop and it sizes the windows as I like. As you can see in that shot it takes me two seconds to open up three documents across my monitors. Some may some overkill, to me it’s definitely productivity.
Interesting Devin, I’ll have to check out this GridMove program when I have the screens to actually make use of it.
I can imagine when working within a single document a larger screen would be useful, spreadsheets were the primary task I had in mind.
I think it really depends on what you are doing, for multitasking purposes a dual or triple setup is imho the best, as it was said earlier, you can have multiple applications open, each on their own screen and if necessary you can concentrate on just one of them.
On the other hand if you primarily using applications like Photoshop, Premiere, Excel… which can really be using a lot of desktop space, a big 30″ screen could be superior.
I do a lot of multitasking and am very pleased with my dual 19″ setup and I don’t think that I would use just 1 30″ display, even if I would have the money. ;-)
Greetings