How in the world can you code with a movie going on next to you? That's the least pleasant thing I can imagine for coding. (which isn't to say I couldn't use an extra monitor for my playlist... )
Bill Mill | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 1:56 am | #

I find myself going the opposite way... smaller screens. I am now using a 12" screen at 800x600 (an old clamshell iBook). Although I don't use it for my work...
Hans | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 3:26 am | #

More screen real estate is the cheapest productivity boost you can get. I run three Samsung 204Ts (20" LCDs). Left and center are fed from a single linux box and the right one is a WindowsXPs machine (it is there for web testing and sometimes games).

Synergy makes the windows box useful at least for web browsing. It is a virtual KVM that works on linux, OSX, and windows. Run the mouse off the side of the screen and all keyboard and mouse events are retransmitted to that machine. Great stuff. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Jack Diederich | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 3:34 am | #

Synergy saved my sanity last summer when I was simultaneously working on a Linux machines and a Windows machine, both right beside each other. I had to keep switching back and forth between them, dozens of times a day.

I was about to go nuts when a coworker pointed me in the direction of Synergy.
Jay Parlar | 07/03/20 - 4:23 am | #

Agreed about the insanity of "watching" movies while coding, it's right at the outer edge of being human.

> Shame it costs $40, but it seems worth it.

Mmh, I seem to recall someone around here *selling shareware*, FCOL? :-P
Nicola Larosa | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 10:12 am | #

FCOL ?? Anyway - I think $25 would be a more appropriate price for a small utility like Ultramon, but I'm generally happy to support independent software companies.
Fuzzyman | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 10:32 am | #

Ha, the setup looks fabulous, having only recently graduated to dual-screens at home I'm slightly jealous. But, conversely to the other commenters, I can't *believe* you watch movies while doing other stuff. I love to get seriously into the things that I watch, adjusting the lights, rearranging the furniture, shushing the neighbours, so that I can give proper reverence to the three minutes of featureless black screen at the start of a Kubrick movie.

Are you sure you're not missing out on most of the point of a decent movie by only giving it half your attention?
Jonathan Hartley | Homepage | 07/03/20 - 2:49 pm | #

I remember he had trouble giving us a sensible précis of Primer.

Although I watched that reasonably carefully, and I guess I couldn't really do that either.
xtian | 07/03/21 - 7:42 pm | #