Seeing the subject crop up in another thread I thought I'd canvas thoughts on whether dual monitors are really used and found to be cost effective.

I'll start with my thoughts...

Historically, I'm certainly not a fan of flat panel screens. I find the image quality less than that of a half decent CRT for any sort of graphics. I bought a pretty decent 19" CRT which i comfortanbly run at 1600x1200 and I'm really happy with the quality i get.

When I put together my spec for a new rig a few months ago I considered two monitors. Either I get another 19" CRT, whcih franly would just take over the the whole desk and more or I would need to re-invest in 2 flat panels. I admit I didn't spend too long looking because it seemed the best res I could get off a flat panel was 1280x1024. Double that for two monitors. Not bad I thought! But then the price comes out. The cost of two halfway decent flat panels runnign at that sort of res would have added another £700 (or so) to the cost of the rig. I decided that £700 for only a third again as many pixels as I already had was just not worth the effort.

And then from previous experience I would have had a display of lesser quality - but a tiny bit bigger.

Conclusion. No burning desire here to move up to a second monitor!

What's everyone else do?

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