Chris demoed me a dual monitor setup a few weeks ago when I was visiting. I know dual monitors is nothing new for most tech people, myself included. I remember when my cousin Wayne showed me it once a several years ago with 2 15″ flat panels. This was back when 1 flat screen was a big deal, but 2 was just decadent.
I had played around with the dual monitor concept just once over a year ago. I setup 2 flat panels (15″ Samsung’s) side by side. It was cool, but took up desk space. my thoughts at the time was why not just have 2 computers setup? And that is exactly what I did. I had 2 monitors with 2 computer setups. one with a KVM and up to 4 computers and another one for my laptop. Yes I know I was geeking out. But this was for work, so that makes it ok.
Recently as a few weeks ago Jayson had tried the dual monitor thing, but gave it up because of desk space issues.
When seeing Chris’s setup I realized the advantage of actually using two displays. One for general work stuff, and the other for terminal sessions (in full screen) or leaving our monitoring tools up on screen all day. I found a video card I could use (already with dual monitor support built in so I had no need to find a PCI card to go along with my AGP one) and put it in my desktop box. Besides having the dual head setup looking really cool with the matrix screen saver running on both monitors, it was also practical since I left our monitoring “threat board” up on a screen all day. I did loose some desk space, but I got rid of the monitor stand I had so I think it evens things out. Not sure if I will keep this setup, but for now it is working out for me!