Dave Collins writes that the New York Times reports a 30% increase in productivity when users run multiple monitors. He also links to an interesting discussion touting 36 screen setups and some photos of other big multi-screen configurations.
A few months ago I discovered an excellent piece of software called MaxiVista. MaxiVista lets you use a second PC’s screen as a secondary monitor. It is ideal if you have an old laptop. You can sit the laptop next to your primary monitor and, via the network, the laptop becomes a second screen.
MaxiVista also lets you switch from secondary display mode to remote control mode. Now just by moving your mouse from one screen to the next you can control the other PC. It is really quite cool and very handy. As it happens I have two PCs that I use regularly and I used to switch between them using a KVM switch. Now, with an old 17 inch monitor on the other PC and MaxiVista installed, I run my main PC in dual-screen mode and when I want to use the other machine I just switch to remote control mode and move the mouse across to the second screen. I can switch between PCs just by moving the mouse from one screen to the other. It really is very slick. Check it out at maxivista.com.
