Timmy's 20 Second Tech Tips Tim Dunham

If you find something inaccurate or have a suggestion, question or comment, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at Tim@TnTBible.org

Date Title Description
Sunday January 24, 2010 Benefits of Dual Monitors
Using a Monitor in Portrait style		 This tech tip will show you ways to increase your productivity by using dual monitors as well as discuss the benefits of rotating your wide screen 90 degrees (no benefit if you don't have a wide screen).
Using dual monitors is becoming increasingly more popular and so now computer manufacturers are shipping computers out (even low end models) with a dual video card onboard which gives you the ability to plug in two monitors to your computer.  If you have never experienced using dual screens it may be confusing as to how it works, but simply put it increases your computer's desktop space.  You can move your mouse from one screen to the other seamlessly and drag applications from one screen to the other.  The claim has been made that a computer user's work efficiency with computer related tasks increase by 20-30%!  When I decided to make this a tech tip, I looked up articles on the subject to share, here is one from New York Times.

Now with regard to rotating a wide screen 90 degrees, if you are going with a dual monitor configuration I would say this is an ABSOLUTE must to do with one of your wide screens.  Now if you are staying with one single monitor and find yourself doing mostly web browsing/editing, document viewing/editing then you will find rotating a monitor to portrait style a major benefit as you will find yourself eliminating scrolling and being able to view a lot more pertinent information than when it was in landscape mode.  Now if you use your computer for watching movies mostly and want them full screen then leave your screen in the default position.

If you are interested in more options with regards to rotating your single screen and your screen doesn't come with a fancy rotating feature for your stand then you can buy one at Staples for around $40-50.  And if you want a monitor that AUTOMATICALLY changes your settings in your computer so when you rotate back and forth you don't need to do a thing (kind of like the iPhone does) then look for a screen online that uses EZtune or some other similar technology that recognizes when you rotate the screen.

One more tip, if you are going to use a wide screen as your primary screen (especially if it is your ONLY screen), consider relocating your Windows Taskbar to the left or right of your screen instead of the bottom as almost everyone uses.  The reason for this is a wide screen usually wastes a lot of horizontal space but needs more vertical space to eliminate a little more scrolling... using the taskbar on the side of your screen will accomplish this.  You might hate it for a few days, but if you force yourself to get used to it, you will not likely go back.  To do this, right click your task bar on the bottom of your screen, uncheck the "Lock the taskbar", then left click and drag the taskbar to the side of the screen and then go back in and lock the taskbar.

Personally I could not live without dual screens (1 in portrait and the other in landscape positions).

2-14-10 addition: Check out this payback calculator that shows you how long it takes to regain the cost of investing in dual monitors... each person will be different depending on the income that the computer influences on your work.