Originally posted on April 11, 2007 @ 4:51 am
A year ago my friend suggested that I either buy two monitors for a single machine or buy a really big widescreen. According to him, having either of these two monitor solutions would double my productivity. I hardly believed him. It seemed like an exaggeration.
However, I was recently noticing how my current computer was holding me back (I found myself waiting on bootup and feeling especially sluggish with 5-10 applications open at once). So I buckled down and bought a new ‘puter. The system I got is from Dell, customized to handle the 5-10 applications I’m using at any given time. The system has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB Hard drive, and a 21 inch widescreen lcd monitor. The monitor is *sweet* and to my amazement, the ability to have two applications open side by side without having to Alt-Tab between them literally does save you bundles of time.
I can’t emphasize this enough. If you’re still going old school with your monitor you’re missing out. Think of all the time you spend moving between applications. Now think of all the times when you’re using two applications in coordination. Cut in one, paste in the other. What if you didn’t need to alt-tab between the two? You’d be amazed by how much time this saves in the end.
How about all the bloggers out there? Need one browser open for research and another for writing? A widescreen or dual screen setup allows you to have to 2 browsers side by side. Again, this simple functional enhancement saves you loads of time.
Although I was skeptical a year ago, now I’m a believer. A true believer in the power of having the proper setup to maximize your productivity.