Dual Screen

Are Two Monitors Really More Productive Than One?

When you see those people with two observers, you may assume they do some technical work that requires all that screen space, or they just really like technology.

But having the fresh display real estate that an alternate screen provides can profit anyone, indeed if you’re doing account or document work all day.
We get used to being boxed in by the screen size we have. This can lead to us floundering when trying to fit two windows next to each other or continuously clicking between layers of windows on the desktop.

utmost of us have endured clicking around to find the window we actually need in a subcaste of different operations. This is one of the effects that eats up time during the day and that using binary defenses can help exclude.
According to a study by software inventor Mavenlink, 73 surveyed businesses say they spend over an hour per day on average just switching between different apps.

Productivity Research on Dual-Screens

So just how much can using a second monitor improve productivity? Probably more than you realize.

Jon Peddie Research looked at the benefit of using two screens connected to a desktop computer or laptop for several years. It found that overall, employees in all types of jobs can improve productivity by an average of 42%.

From three studies conducted over 15 years, it also found that between 2002 and 2017, there’s been a significant rise in the use of two monitors, with a compound annual growth rate of 10%.

The company’s namesake put it simply saying, “The more you can see, the more you can do.”

What Are the Advantages of Adding a 2nd Screen?

Do More in Less time

The biggest advantage to using a second monitor is that you can do more in less time because you’re not struggling to get to the windows you need when you need them.

With an additional monitor, you can keep programs like email always open on one screen while you work in other programs on the second screen. You’re able to work more fluidly, getting to all your apps when you need them.

Expands Screen Space for Laptops

Laptops are great for portability, especially when traveling or moving between home and work (as many employees do these days). But the more portable the laptop, the smaller the screen space.

One big drawback of using a laptop is that they will have a smaller monitor. There is also the difficulty in positioning. When using them on a desk, people will often try to prop them up, but the person is still staring down at the screen in most cases.

Connecting your laptop to a monitor can significantly improve the experience and make it like working on a normal desktop PC. You can either choose to mirror your entire screen or still make use of the laptop screen for some activities while using the larger screen for others.

Side-by-Side Comparisons Are Easier

There are a lot of tasks that require looking at data in two windows. You may be editing and comparing a finished design with the original instructions. Or you may have to pull details from notes to include in a PowerPoint presentation.

Trying to get two windows up on a single screen side-by-side can be frustrating. You may try to resize the windows just so, only to have your configuration lost when you have to maximize a screen to click a menu item or scroll.

With two monitors, you have the screen real estate you need to fully open both windows and have them right next to each other so you can easily do your work.

More Freedom During Video Calls

Have you ever been screen sharing on a video call and needed to check an email or review notes? It’s difficult to do that when everyone can see your screen. We often “sanitize” our screens (like turning off alerts, etc.) before we go into a meeting to ensure nothing that should not appear is popping up.

With dual screens, you can choose which screen you want to share during meetings, and still have apps open on the other screen that no one can see. This is a big advantage if you need to check for an email or message someone while you’re sharing your screen.

Fairly Inexpensive Productivity Booster

Purchasing another display is a fairly low investment when looking at technology. A monitor can be purchased from anywhere between $125 to $250 on average. And with a 42% average productivity boost, it can have a pretty sweet ROI.

There is also no big learning curve with this upgrade. Once the monitor is plugged in and the PC is set to see the additional screen, it’s good to go. Users can simply drag apps and documents from one screen to another as if they had one large screen.

Need Help Improving Productivity?

There are several productivity boosts that you can get using the right technology tools, and they do n’t have to bring a fortune. Ask us how we can help you!

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9 Amazing Articles on Python Programming

A lot is happening in the world of Python. Support for Python 2 is ending and more and more companies are referencing Python in job descriptions as it continues to gain new libraries and more support. Since there is so much changing so fast, we gathered some of our favorite pieces. We hope they help you with your Python programming journey! Python 2 EOL: How to Survive the End of Python 2 By Serdar Yegulalp On January 1, 2020, the 2.x branch of the Python programming language will no longer be supported by its creators, the Python Software Foundation. Here’s what you can do if you’re stuck with Python 2 in what is fast becoming a Python 3 world. Read More Here What Do Companies Expect From Python Devs In 2019? By Andrew Stetsenko Image for post Image for post What skills do you need to succeed as a Python dev in 2019? Our team took 300 job specs for Python developers, scrapped from StackOverflow, AngelList, LinkedIn, and some fast-growing tech companies worldwide. Read More Here Asynchronous Programming in Python: A Walkthrough by David Bolton When we talk about program execution, “asynchronous” means that the program doesn’t wait for a particular process to complete, but carries on regardless. Read More Here Buggy Python Code: The 10 Most Common Mistakes That Python Developers Make By Martin Chikilian Python’s simple, easy-to-learn syntax can mislead Python developers, especially those new to the language, into missing some of its subtleties and underestimating the power of the diverse Python language. Read More Here Creating a Heatmap From Scratch in Python Image for post Image for post Heatmaps are frequently used to visualize event occurrence or density. There are some Python libraries or GIS software/tools that can be used to create a heatmap, such as QGIS, ArcGIS, and Google Table Fusion. Unfortunately, this piece doesn’t discuss how to create a heatmap using those software/tools, but more than that, we will write our own code to create a heatmap in Python 3 from scratch. The algorithm which will be used to create a heatmap in Python is Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). Please refer to QGIS Heatmap Using KDE Explained for more explanation about KDE and Heatmap Calculation Tutorial which gives an example of how to calculate intensity for a point from a reference point using KDE. Read More Here How to Build Your Own Neural Network From Scratch in Python By James Loy Image for post Image for post Most introductory texts to Neural Networks brings up brain analogies when describing them. Without delving into brain analogies, I find it easier to simply describe Neural Networks as a mathematical function that maps a given input to the desired output. Read More Here What Exactly Can You Do With Python? Here Are Python’s 3 Main Applications by YK Sugi “What exactly can I use Python for?” Well, that’s a tricky question to answer because there are so many applications for Python. Read More Here Python Programming Language Gets Speed Boost From Latest PyPy Interpreter By Nick Heath Good news for Python developers, thanks to a new release of the already speedy PyPy interpreter that promises to be the fastest version yet. If you’re programming using Python, an important choice is whether to run your code using the main CPython interpreter or an alternative such as PyPy, with each option having pros and cons. Read More Here How to Collect, Customize, and Centralize Python Logs By Emily Chang and Nils Bunge The logging module is included in Python’s standard library, which means that you can start using it without installing anything. The logging module’s basicConfig() method is the quickest way to configure the desired behavior of your logger.

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In Pursuit of Simplicity

John Maeda created quite a stir with his montage of the Yahoo and Google homepages from 1996 to 2006 in simple is about staying simple:

Although Philipp Lenssen has posted on this topic before (he calls it the portal plague), it’s still striking. Altavista made the same mistake, and they didn’t survive.

There’s an interesting anecdote about Google’s absolute focus on minimalism in Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow:

It turns out that the folks at Google are obsessed with the email they get criticizing the service. They take it very seriously. One person writes in every once and a while and he never signs his name. According to Marissa Meyer at Google, “Every time he writes, the e-mail contains only a two-digit number. It took us a while to figure out what he was doing. He’s counting the number of words on the home page. When the number goes up, he gets irritated, and e-mails us the new word count. As crazy as it sounds, his emails are helpful, because they put an interesting discipline on the UI team not to introduce too many links. It’s like a scale that tells you that you’ve gained two pounds.”

And of course, 37signals is famous for their mantra of less as a competitive advantage:

Conventional wisdom says to beat your competitors you need to one-up them. If they have 4 features, you need 5. Or 15. Or 25. If they’re spending X, you need to spend XX. If they have 20, you need 30.While this strategy may still work for some, it’s expensive, resource intensive, difficult, defensive, and not very satisfying. And I don’t think it’s good for customers either. It’s a very Cold War mentality — always trying to one-up. When everyone tries to one-up, we all end up with too much. There’s already too much “more” — what we need are simple solutions to simple, common problems, not huger solutions to huger problems.

What I’d like to suggest is a different approach. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing. Do less than your competitors to beat them.

Usability guru Donald Norman thinks the comparison between Google and Yahoo is misleading, and offers the truth about Google’s so-called “simplicity”:

Is Google simple? No. Google is deceptive. It hides all the complexity by simply showing one search box on the main page. The main difference, is that if you want to do anything else, the other search engines let you do it from their home pages, whereas Google makes you search through other, much more complex pages. Why aren’t many of these just linked together? Why isn’t Google a unified application? Why are there so many odd, apparently free-standing services?

I think this is a completely wrongheaded analysis, because I don’t want to do anything else. All I want is to find what I’m searching for. Like Damien Katz, I believe features don’t matter:

These people don’t care about your flexible, brilliant architecture. They don’t wish to tweak settings. They don’t want to spend more than 10 consecutive seconds confused. They just want simple, they want to get their task done and move on. They don’t want to spend time learning anything because they know they’ll probably just forget it long before they’ll need to do it again anyway.

We should always be in pursuit of simplicity, in whatever form it takes.