Dual Monitors

I have been going through the thread "Show Us Your Rig". There are quite a few rigs with dual monitors. What is the purpose of that? Inquiring minds want to know.

Extended desktop space.
and alot of people who play games will use three monitors with Nvidia surround or AMD eyefinity.

I quite often have a different OS running on secondary screen in a virtual machine, for multiple purposes, as told for instance here.

Good question. When I first heard about dual monitors I had the exact reaction you did. I was like, "That's strange and seems really silly!" But ever since I got mine set up I love it. It is like having 2 different computers going. I can work on a website and a spreadsheet @ the same time. I can have multiple browsers open and still have room for other things. It also helps when you want to compare different things like on newegg or ebay, etc... If you ever get a chance to run duals you will love it.

WartHog said:

Good question. When I first heard about dual monitors I had the exact reaction you did. I was like, "That's strange and seems really silly!" But ever since I got mine set up I love it. It is like having 2 different computers going. I can work on a website and a spreadsheet @ the same time. I can have multiple browsers open and still have room for other things. It also helps when you want to compare different things like on newegg or ebay, etc... If you ever get a chance to run duals you will love it.

That makes a lot of sense. I do the compare also but just use two tabs of Internet Explorer. == When you have two monitors, does your one mouse go on both screens?

bigmck said:

That makes a lot of sense. I do the compare also but just use two tabs of Internet Explorer. == When you have two monitors, does your one mouse go on both screens?

yes, in essence what happens is that your "desktop" gets extended, so you can move the mouse from 1 monitor to the second monitor, so only one mouse.
think of it like this, with one monitor you have 1920*1080 resolution, add a second in extended mode and the resolution would be 1920*2160 because it extends to the second monitor.

bigmck said:

WartHog said:

Good question. When I first heard about dual monitors I had the exact reaction you did. I was like, "That's strange and seems really silly!" But ever since I got mine set up I love it. It is like having 2 different computers going. I can work on a website and a spreadsheet @ the same time. I can have multiple browsers open and still have room for other things. It also helps when you want to compare different things like on newegg or ebay, etc... If you ever get a chance to run duals you will love it.

That makes a lot of sense. I do the compare also but just use two tabs of Internet Explorer. == When you have two monitors, does your one mouse go on both screens?

My mouse gets stuck inbetween switching screens

Rofl!!!

I use dual monitors at work and have for years and would be lost without the second monitor. For home use, I'm fine with just a single monitor. In fact, most of the time, I am using my laptop which obviously only has 1 screen.