Monday’s Wall Street Journal has a short column extolling the benefits of using multiple monitors on a computer.

The article, titled When More Is More by Michael Totty can be viewed by clicking here.

From the article:

Paccar has added multimonitor setups for material planners on its manufacturing lines, who have to manage demand for production parts using information on inventories inside and outside the company. Because of limited desk space and falling prices of displays, planners received two larger widescreen monitors instead of the three-screen setup in the call center. The ability to manage more rapidly changing information has produced a 10% to 20% boost in productivity, Mr. Quinn says.

Software to support multiple monitors has come a long way, so the days of external boxes are dwindling (e.g. the Matrox DualHead2Go product).  Also, prices for LCD displays continue to drop, so purchasing two 20″ monitors and a 256MB graphics card for each workstation could be done for about $500 (obviously you can spend much more for additional memory and larger displays).  For that price, the cost may likely be recovered in less than a month due to gains in employee (and personal) productivity.

Multiple Monitors and Email

My one criticism of the article: do not be compelled to leave your Microsoft Outlook window (or any other email program) active in one of your displays.  New incoming emails are a distraction and they interrupt your thought process and productivity.  Instead, close your email program altogether and begin a habit of checking email in batches, perhaps 3 or 4 times a day.

Afraid that you’ll miss “critical” or time-sensitive emails?  Train those who are emailing you to call you instead, or perhaps walk down the hall to your office (if you work in a small environment as I do) for critical communication.  Also, you may look in to a utility called AwayFind to help others communicate time-sensitive needs (I currently don’t use AwayFind, but it’s on my radar screen).

What’s My Setup?

Here’s the setup that I’m using in my firm to add productivity to my daily tasks:

• Two Dell 2007FPb 20″ LCD displays
• NVIDIA e-GeForce 6200 256MB DDR2 PCI graphics card
• Resolution set to 1600 x 1200 for each monitor

This configuration has definitely increased my productivity.  I am able to reconcile portfolio accounts much faster, I can generate mail merge email messages to our entire list of advisory clients in a flash, and I can record compliance information without constantly switching between source data files and input forms.

If you’re on the fence about adding multiple monitors, I urge you to take the plunge and make the purchase.  It may take a day or two to get used to working with multiple screens, but you will not regret it.

You’ll wonder how you ever worked before with just one screen!

Related articles:

• Create a New Message Shortcut for Outlook
• Expand Outlook Efficiency with Switch Options
• Stop Sending “Dear Valued Client” Emails

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 2:07 am and is filed under Efficiency, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.