Don’t touch the screen, you’ll get it all mucky… oh

Image: eyeliam

Having two (or more) screens connected to your computer is a veritable luxury. If you do not have the pleasure of being cocooned in LCD screens whilst you work, I urge you to take the matter to the highest level. You are missing out.

Here are my top 8 reasons to fight for that extra screen.

1.    Train Your Eyes Independently

You can pretend that you have trained your eyes to be independent and look at two things at once.

If drummers can learn how to move their arms and legs independently of one another, why can’t you train your eyes? This may be wishful thinking, but I bet you will try it right now. Just make sure no one is looking.

2.    Magic Tricks

Pretending that your mouse is jumping between the two screens is a temporarily amusing magic trick. “Watch as the cursor jumps from one screen, through my hand, right onto the next”.

3.    Pretending to Live in the Future

You can pretend you are in the Minority Report/Matrix, whatever film you fancy really. Everything seems a lot more exciting with two screens. I’m not sure if it’s just the novelty, but that novelty hasn’t worn off yet.

4.    Affordable Luxury

Monitors have tumbled in price, so there’s no better time to buy one than the present. Make sure that your computer is up to the job though, as you may find that there is a noticeable difference in performance if you are running processor heavy software.

5.    Minimum Effort Set Up

Both Mac and PC operating systems should automatically detect that there is a shiny new toy to play with. Just a few tweaks of resolution and colour, and you are good to go. Easy. So much new shininess for such little effort.

6.    Improve Productivity

We’re down to number six; I might as well throw in a practical application. Believe it or not, having a second screen is a big time saver. Instead of checking a system log viewer, minimising said viewer, bringing up your document and forgetting what you are going to write – you can simply glance across. Yup, welcome to the world of glancing. Glancers are winners. Are you a winner?

7.    Shirk your Responsibilities in Style.

The 50% work rule. If you have a sports site displayed at work on your one solitary screen, there is little doubt that you are shirking your responsibilities and actually just wasting work time. When you introduce a second screen however, you can have your beloved fan forum open on one, and legitimate work on the other. Which one are you looking at? Well there is a 50% chance that you are working on that spreadsheet. 50% is often enough.

8.    Wallpaper of Dreams

Double the real estate equals double the lovely desktop background. Everyone likes to accessorise their work computer with their own personal touch. Now you get twice as much space as everyone else. Twice as much, means twice as good. Like a double cheeseburger. Delectable.

If you need any more reasons to install a second monitor, you are quite frankly mad. But there are probably more reasons why you should. Feel free to add them in the comments section so others may also rejoice in the freedom the dual-monitor club brings.

James Duval is an IT specialist living in the hope that one day we will all become robots and robo-boogie for the rest of our days. He writes for centeractive from his tech castle.