Jüngst habe ich mich mit einem erfolgreichen befreundeten Manager getroffen. Er war überrascht, dass ich an 2 Bildschirmen arbeite und offensichtlich etwas verwundert, als ich darstellte, dass ich über größere nachdenke. Das hat mich dazu veranlaßt mal im Web zu recherchieren, was "wirklich gut" ist bzw. was andere denken.

Vorteile von mehren Bildschirmen

• Mehr Übersicht auf dem eigenen Desktop
• Parallel und Vergleichsarbeiten möglich (z.B. beim E-Mails bearbeiten, beim Surfen, beim Erstellen von Dokumenten mit Vorlagen, bei Zusammenfassungen, beim Bloggen, ...)
• Einfache Durchführung von Cut&Paste-Vorgängen
• Möglichkeit einen Monitor für Überwachungstätigkeiten zu nutzen (Achtung: Produktivitätsfallen)
• Mehr Platz, um mehr Programme gleichzeitig zu sehen.
• Ein klein wenig mehr Bewegung am Arbeitsplatz 🙂

Nachteile mehrerer Bildschirme

• Kosten für die Anschaffung
• Arbeitszeit für die Einrichtung. (Unter Linux hat ein Kollege von mir mal über 5 Stunden zur Konfiguration verbracht. Ich bin bei meiner jüngsten Linux-Installation am zweiten Bildschirm gescheitert.) 🙂
• Platzverbrauch auf dem Schreibtisch
• Mögliche Ungleichheit im Büro, in dem andere keine 2 Bildschirme haben

Hier ein paar Ergebnisse meiner Recherchen mit ein paar Zitaten:

Microsoft Research News & Highlights: Two Screens Are Better Than One

• Microsoft researchers have found an increase of your productivity by 9 to 50 percent with two or more big monitors.
• I'll Never Go Back!
  Give someone a second monitor, let them use it for while, and then try to take it away. It just isn't going to happen. They'll never go back to a mono display. Researchers in the Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment group (VIBE), found that increasing a computer user's display space made it easier for them to complete their tasks.

The New York Times: The Virtues of a Second Screen

• "I should not have been surprised. Survey after survey shows that whether you measure your productivity in facts researched, alien spaceships vaporized, or articles written, adding an extra monitor will give your output a considerable boost — 20 percent to 30 percent, according to a survey by Jon Peddie Research."
• "With a single monitor, I could jump between applications with a mouse click or a keyboard command (Alt-Tab, in Windows), but not nearly as fast — and small delays add up when you repeat them dozens or even hundreds of times a day. With my dual displays, I simply sweep my mouse from one screen to the other."
• "And that gives me an idea: Adding a second monitor turned out to be the easiest, most cost-effective and significant improvement in my work since I replaced my modem with high-speed cable."

Coding Horror: Multiple Monitors and Productivity

• "RealTimeSoft's UltraMon utility adds an additional taskbar for each secondary monitor, and each taskbar only shows tasks from the monitor it is on. This makes managing lots of open applications much easier, and when activating an application, you'll know on which monitor it will appear.  I had no idea how significant this feature was until I tried it. It's huge!"

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: Productivity and Screen Size

• "A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn't test realistic tasks, and it didn't test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully."
• In dem Artikel beschreibt Nielsen ausführlich, warum genaue Prozentangaben nicht sinnvoll und nicht realistisch messbar sind.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: Screen Resolution and Page Layout

• "Big monitors are the easiest way to increase white-collar productivity, and anyone who makes at least $50,000 per year ought to have at least 1600x1200 screen resolution. A flat-panel display with this resolution currently costs less than $500. So, as long as the bigger display increases productivity by at least 0.5%, you'll recover the investment in less than a year. (The typical corporate overhead doubles the company's per-employee cost; always remember to use loaded cost, not take-home salary, in any productivity calculation.)"
• "Apple and Microsoft have both published reports that attempt to quantify the productivity gains from bigger monitors. Sadly, the studies don't provide credible numbers because of various methodological weaknesses. My experience shows estimated productivity gains of 5-10% when users do knowledge work on a big monitor. This translates into about an 0.5-1% increase in overall productivity for a person who does screen-focused knowledge work 10% of the day. There's no doubt that big screens are worth the money."
• "I personally use a 2048x1536 display, and I wouldn't even call that a really big screen. Within the next 10 years, I expect monitors of, say, 5000x3000 to be in fairly common use, at least among high-end business professionals."

CNN Money.com: How I Work: Bill Gates

• "On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity."
• "The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me."

Weitere Artikel:

• AccountingWeb: IT Basics: Two screens are better than one
• Two screens are better than one and three are even better ...
• Dr. Web: Mehr Produktivität durch mehrere Monitore und Rechner an einem Arbeitsplatz
• Chip Online: Mit dem Zweiten sehen Sie mehr
  Bestimmt kennen Sie das klassische Desktop-Problem: Im Chaos zahlreicher Programmfenster und Icons verliert man leicht die Übersicht. Die Lösung ist ganz einfach: Mit einem zusätzlichen Monitor, den passenden Tools und unserem Workshop behalten Sie in Zukunft den Durchblick.
• Dual-Screen-Arbeiter sind produktiver
• Viel hilft viel - zwei Displays

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