The power of three

It’s too bad the late George Carlin never updated his classic ‘70s comedy monologue A place for my stuff (tinyurl.com/28bnb5) for the Digital Age. Here’s how I imagine it would’ve gone:

By Eric Lai / Tuesday, September 30 2008

I myself have three displays adorning my desktop. On the left: a 19-inch Dell CRT on which I keep open a minimum of a dozen Firefox tabs at any given time. In the middle: a 19-inch ViewSonic LCD on which I take notes and write articles in Word, read PDF and Excel attachments, and watch Windows Media files. On the right: the 15-inch LCD screen of my ThinkPad laptop, on which I do email and IM chat.

Unlike buying a McMansion, boosting your onscreen real estate is more than an exercise in wasteful vanity – it boosts productivity. This theory (which I subscribe to) is prominently championed by blogger Jeff Atwood: When it comes to onscreen real estate, multiple smaller parcels are more efficient than a single large one.

“Instead of wasting time sizing, moving and ordering windows, users only need to deal with one maximised window at a time,” Atwood wrote in an aptly named entry, The Large Display Paradox, last year. “They can flip between maximised applications in much the same way they change channels on the television.”

Or to go back to Carlin: for holding your stuff, several smaller bags are better than one huge sack.
The clincher for me is that opting for several smaller monitors over a single monster one is significantly cheaper. A brand-name 28-inch LCD – which, in my opinion, is the equivalent to a pair of 19-inch displays – will set you back close to $1,000. But you can replicate my dual 19-inch monitor setup (assuming you’ve already got the notebook) from scratch for about $600.

Here’s my guide to boosting onscreen real estate on the cheap.

Step 1: Get your monitors.
LCD prices may not be plummeting like they were several years ago, but they are still dropping. As of late July, 19-inch LCDs were starting at about $280 online at sites like Ascent.co.nz. If that’s too rich for your blood, I’ve seen plenty of 19-inch monitors on TradeMe (some with warranties) for $200 or less.
Of course, if you’ve got plenty of desk space, there’s always the CRT option, and they’re essentially giving those away on TradeMe.

There is the argument that LCDs are significantly more energy efficient than CRTs, using only about one-third as much electricity. If you have a green bent, and like to watch your carbon footprint, this may rule out CRTs for you, but in true cost saving terms the difference will be insignificant compared to the money you’ll save buying a CRT over an LCD.

One gadget you might consider if you go with a CRT is Belkin’s new Conserve power strip, which lets you shut off plugged-in gadgets via remote control so that they don’t drain power when in standby mode.

Cost for two monitors: between $0 (for two 19-inch CRTs obtained via TradeMe) and $300 (one free CRT, one 19-inch LCD).

Step 2: Hook up the monitors.
Until several years ago, running multiple monitors usually required a desktop PC equipped with a video card for each additional monitor. If you had a notebook, the best you could do was connect it to a single external monitor.

That changed in 2005 when graphics card maker Matrox (matrox.com) released its DualHead2Go. Essentially an external video card in a fist-sized plastic case, the DualHead2Go connects two monitors to a laptop via a USB port. The VGA version supports up to 1280 x 1024 resolution for each screen, while the digital DVI version supports up to 1920 x 1200 per monitor.

The big caveat with the DualHead2Go (which costs between $290 and $390 online, depending on whether you get the analogue or digital version), and the even more ambitious TripleHead2Go (which costs between $500 and $600, minimum), is that both products actually create one ultra-wide desktop that spans two or three monitors. Users can split up the desktop into smaller windows using Matrox’s PowerDesk software. But it appeared to me to be a somewhat kludgy solution that adds extra steps.

These days, most people can make do with external USB video cards, such as Tritton Technologies’ See2 adapter (trittontechnologies.com), available from NetOpt.com.au for A$195 plus freight, and Iogear’s USB 2.0 External VGA Video Card (iogear.com), available from IOGear’s online store for US$99. Each of these cards let you add a single monitor each. Many use chip technology and software from DisplayLink (displaylink.com), which is rapidly emerging as the standard for this technology on the Windows side. DisplayLink has also released a beta driver that should enable any of its partners’ products to work with Intel Macs running Mac OS X.

As for me – while IOGear’s product is not the cheapest of the three listed above, I was so impressed with the demo version that I went out and bought my own online.

Smaller than the proverbial pack of cards, the IOGear nevertheless does a flicker-free job of powering my Dell CRT at 1280 x 1024 resolution and 32-bit colour. Watching YouTube videos or DVD movies is rarely a problem, either. The only hiccups I encounter are ones I can also find on a single-screen setup, such as when I’ve got half-a-dozen apps open or the ThinkPad’s fan is running full blast.

IOGgear also offers a digital DVI version for large LCD monitors that can support up to 1600 x 1200 resolution. It lists for US$149.

Cost for IOGear External USB Video Card: US$99.

Step 3: Take control of your monitors.
Most of the video adapters you choose will come with their own window management software. For example, DisplayLink Manager, which ships with the IOGear and many others, is competent at adjusting the settings of your various windows, and even has some rudimentary shortcuts.

But power users looking for more features will want to look elsewhere.

Realtime Soft’s UltraMon (realtimesoft.com/ultramon), the cr�me de la cr�me of multi-monitor software, has two unique features: the ability to set hot keys for common commands and the ability to “remember” how big and where you like your application windows to open. UltraMon also lets you easily move windows from screen to screen, adjusting to changes in dimension, e.g., from a wide-screen monitor to a conventional 4:3 one.

UltraMon also lets you create different wallpapers and screensavers for each monitor. For power users, this US$40 Swiss-made Windows utility is worth every penny. Note: it’s compatible with most video adapters with the glaring exception of the Matrox Dual/TripleHead2Go products.

MediaChance’s free (mediachance.com/free/multimon) MultiMonitor task bar is for users who don’t want to pay US$40 and mainly want the ability to quickly send app windows from one monitor to the next.

DisplayFusion from Binary Fortress (binaryfortress.com/displayfusion) claims to offer nearly all of UltraMon’s features, apart from letting users preset how and where app windows open. It does allow users to search for and download images from Flickr for wallpaper purposes. DisplayFusion costs US$10 for the full version and requires Microsoft’s .Net Framework 2.0.

Cost: US$40 for UltraMon, US$10 or free for other utilities.

More choices
There are other alternatives. You could consider a video-enabled laptop docking port, such as Lenovo’s Enhanced USB Port Replicator (from $250 online), or Toshiba’s Dynadock (from $300). These let you add an extra monitor along with half a dozen USB ports to any brand of laptop.

Or if you go by the theory that today’s 19-inch LCD is yesterday’s obsolete 15-incher, then you could opt for a single larger LCD today and plan to add a similar-sized one in the future. Of course, you’ll pay more: 28-inch LCDs start at $1000, while Apple’s 30-inch Cinema Display, the Lexus of LCDs, costs about $3,200. With something that big, you can use utilities such as Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Manager, which let you simulate multiple desktops on a single screen.

Still, I prefer my thriftily assembled trio of monitors. Am I always three times more productive than when I am working in a cafe on my lone laptop screen? No, sometimes it just means I am procrastinating three times as much. But when deadlines rear their ugly head, there’s no place I’d rather be than in front of my triple-headed home office.