![]() ![]() Intel plans to announce on Sunday night that is has begun manufacturing its 32-nm shrink of its Core microprocessor line, which the company refers to by the umbrella code name of "Westmere". Strongly recommended.According to sources on the web Intel has begun producing 32-nm "Westmere" chips, the focus of the company's Intel Developer Forum in two weeks. It's huge! The taskbar becomes far more useful when it isn't crowded by the dozens of windows you're bound to have open, and each taskbar only shows the windows on that particular display. I had no idea how significant this feature was until I tried it. This makes managing lots of open applications much easier, and when activating an application, you'll know on which monitor it will appear. UltraMon adds an additional taskbar for each secondary monitor, and each taskbar only shows tasks from the monitor it is on. If you get serious about multiple monitors, you'll also want a copy of RealTimeSoft's UltraMon utility, which has a bunch of legitimately helpful multiple monitor features, and one absolutely killer feature: So if you're on the fence, or don't have a preference, I'd go with a nVidia video chipset where possible. That way, I only had to install one video driver, and I get the benefit of configuring all three panels using the same display properties applet.ĪTI and nVidia both have good support for multiple monitors in the default drivers, though nVidia's support is significantly better at this point. I had a dual-output nVidia 5200 video card, so I opted to stick with the same chipset by installing a PCI nVidia 5200 video card. I recommend visiting the excellent Multiple Monitor Resources website- they pioneered this topic way back in, er, 1999- and checking their compatibility database. Having two different video drivers installed (from two different vendors, on two different hardware busses) can be problematic. Although this generally works, don't assume it will. If you're interested in moving to three displays, you'll need a second PCI video card installed in addition to your primary AGP video card. I'm also wondering whether I could physically see four monitors without moving my head around a bunch more than I normally do. I think the rule of diminishing returns will definitely kick in for more than three. The increase isn't as noticeable as going from a single monitor was, though. All the "extra stuff" I couldn't fit on the primary or secondary panels finally found a home on the third one. I recently went from two to three panels, and I think the transition is worth the effort. Two monitors is pretty much plug and play with a modern "dual head" video card, but going to three monitors is less common- and more work. Windows XP has mature multiple monitor support it's been a standard out of box win32 feature since Windows 98.The price of less bulky 17" and 19" LCDs are quite reasonable.Most mainstream, inexpensive video cards tend to come with two VGA ports (aka "dual head") standard.This is really a no-brainer for any developer who values his or her time. The biggest complaint was desk space, since all of our monitors were CRTs (no LCDs).Multiple monitors were most useful when the application had palettes or when 2 or 3 windows needed to be open, such as for programming/debugging.Nobody answered that they preferred 1 monitor over 2 even a little bit. On average, people would much rather have 2 smaller monitors than 1 larger monitor.Based on that experience, I wholeheartedly agree with the study survey results: A number of developers, with some nudging from me, have gravitated to multiple monitor setups over the last year. I found an interesting blog post about a small, informal multiple monitor productivity study. ![]()
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