If you ever had two monitors on your desktop computer, and that could include your laptop when it is on the desk, you would never go back.
First of all, on a Mac, all you need is a second video card, which comes with most towers and laptops.
So, let’s say you had two 19 inch monitors, not so very pricey today. Your dock could rest well out of the way on the far left and leave you the full use of the remaining 37 inches- top to bottom. Most of us time-share on the computer – we type a letter but need some facts, so we bring up a related document and layer it on top of the first, then we need to use the browser to find a name or story to illustrate the point we are making and perhaps use Wikipedia to confirm some aspect.
Well, you get the point the screen gets pretty crowded. But with two screens you have 37 inches of territory left to manage, not 2 inches. Try to afford a 38 inch monitor. Not so bad as I said with two 19″ ones.
How you say. Well, the Mac OS recognizes the two monitors and permits you to drag a display from one screen to the other. Or it will expand to cover all 37 inches if need be, and sometimes you do require just a bit more than one will handle.
I have never done a time/motion study, but I would guess my productivity went up 20-30% when I bought the second screen.
Looking for 2 monitors to attach to my MacBookPro… sounds crazy but I just played on someone’s PC setup this way and WOW, i want two 20″ monitors in addition to the 17″macbook pro screen. I’ve run across a few options like using Dell monitors with a pcmcia card or the more expensive options like digital tiger or cinnemasive, but i’m interested if anyone has tried any of the above with a macbook pro.