Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

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I'll disagree with you - the value of 2 or more monitors comes when you want to simply have more stuff on screen at the same time so you can compare / check / whatever.

I.e. you can have a spreadsheet on one monitor, and the results of a bunch of terminal windows on another, and be typing out an email about those two things on another.

You can continue to type the email while reading the spreadsheet and checking the terminal results without having to "switch", or take the draft email off the screen to check that other thing.

I really notice this falls down when I have multiple tabs open in my browser and I want to be mentally dealing with info from one, and inputting it into another. Switch tabs means the one you're entering data into goes away. (Of course, the solution is to have the tabs in different windows, on different monitors, though this example always makes me realize the HUGE time saver of having so much information in view at the same time.)

A simple solution to that is simply copy the stuff you want to process into your clipboard, and pasting it into the document you want to edit, and then edit out all the stuff you don't need or want to change.

I'm personally not in that kind of situation very often. And switching workspaces is faster for me than turning my head to another screen.

An added benefit is that my window manager always knows what workspace I'm looking at. With multiple monitors, your computer doesn't know that, and so keyboard focus becomes a problem, e.g. finding what is currently "in focus" takes more time, finding where your mouse cursor is, etc.

Finally, my setup is the same everywhere I go (at home, at work, on a laptop, etc.) since I only use one physical monitor. I think this is a huge advantage too.

Even if they're not in the same context, it can be easier to switch between contexts by just moving your head, instead of having to press a keyboard shortcut or a button. I use a tiling WM and usually have two contexts side-by-side (half of my 4k 27" display is usually enough for one window to work in) and when I want to switch to something else I can instinctively move to the other one without having to think about it. On the flipside, the lack of friction also means you can get distracted pretty easily, so YMMV.

I agree with the point about being able to compare two windows, but I feel like the second monitor adds much less value now that affordable 32" 4K monitors are a thing. Now the more useful investment is simply learning your OS's window management hotkeys to immediately snap your window to either the left side or right side of the screen.

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