With LED monitors being ever more slimline and affordable, utilising two screens on a desk is becoming the new normal. Designers, stock brokers and computer technicians have been using bigger and dual-screen set-ups for years. These professions are onto it and its time the rest of the working world caught up.
Drawbacks of a single monitor
– The constant maximizing, minimising and resizing of windows is tedious and interrupts your workflow
– One screen makes it frustrating and slow to cut and paste between documents
– Needing to print pages in order to visually refer to them is wasteful
– Unnecessary eye strain and shoulder tension
How to make a dual-screen set-up work for you
You will be amazed at how easy it is to work with two screens and have all your info spread out between them. Here are five ideas for how you can use dual-screens to work smarter:
- Have Info-Organiser open on one screen for quick filing and searching and your work on the other
- Use one screen for internet browsers
- Keep an eye on the company Intranet or Skype messaging on one screen while you do your word docs and emails on the other
- Have portals open on one screen (eg: Tax Office, Superannuation Employer Account, Bank Feeds, etc) while you drag and drop, or reference data from the second screen
- Need to edit lots of documents? Cut from a document on screen one and paste it with a single mouse click into the document on screen two
You can even get a bit fancy and have one screen on a rotatable arm and turn it ‘portrait’ style for when you need to view single page documents in one glance.
There are monthly specials for LED screens at all the major retailers. The one we like at the moment is the Samsung D590 (16:9)27 inch, 1920x1080cm. TIP: be sure to check that the screens you like are compatible with your existing computer and operating software.
Super-size your document management
In today’s workplace with demanding deadlines, KPI targets to meet and computers central to it all, everyone needs to find ways to work faster and smarter. So forget the combo fast-food deals and get super-sizing in a productive way with a second screen. Your document management workflow will improve ten-fold and you will wonder how you ever coped without it.