Prima donna software developers who get anything they want have traditionally awarded themselves second, third, and even fourth monitors. You could cite the industry studies that find increased productivity among multiple monitor users, or you could just accept the formula of computer graphics veteran Jon Peddie: "Can't have too many pixels." Besides, flat-panel displays have gotten so big and so cheap that you no longer need to cable together four screens. Just buy one big one. Thirty-inch mega-monitors first appeared two years ago for $3,300. Today, you can get one for $1,800 that puts more than 4 million pixels on one panel, equivalent to three or four 17-inch monitors or two HDTV screens. A 20-inch model with close to 2 million pixels is only $350.
Apple's Web site flogs a third-party study by Pfeiffer Consulting that concludes 30-inch monitors aren't a luxury. "When working on a computer, we lose much more time than we realize through user-interface manipulations," Pfeiffer's researchers wrote—even if we're handling only e-mail and Web pages and not Photoshop. I dismissed the report as marketing collateral, but after a few weeks at my own widescreen I've reached the same conclusion—it's surprising how much more work I crank out lately. Co-workers praise my newfound motivation. The truth is, I can finally see what I'm doing.
While a faster processor lets you do what you've been doing more quickly, extra display space lets you do things that were previously unthinkable. I can put two versions of an article side by side, editing one while eyeballing the other. I used to squeeze two shrunken windows onto a smaller screen or flip between edit and review windows. That doesn't compare to editing and reading