version2beta : archive : My 18-monitor setup

Sitting right now at my desk at Top Floor Technologies, I’ve got 18 monitors available to me as I work. Excessive? Nah. 18 is almost enough.

I’ve had a variety of computer configurations. Hell, I have a variety of configurations right now, ranging from a decent setup in my home office that’s stuck in the middle of an OS update I started last month and haven’t gotten back to, to a setup at my QM¹ with a 32” LCD TV as the main monitor (with a 23” on the side), to my Version2beta² laptop and 19” Dell monitor that I take with me when working onsite with customers.

In the past, I’ve done 3-monitor configurations. Once even a 4-monitor setup. They’ve been good, sometimes even fun.

Now though, at Top Floor,³ I count 18 monitors on my setup.

As you might guess, these aren’t all full, separate physical monitors. My desk is not so big, nor my chair so rolly. In fact, no one computer (there are three) has more than one physical monitor installed. But I have lots of virtual workspaces, and my fingers are very rolly.

My setup. Count along with me.

Main: Intel Core i7 @ 3.4GHz with 12 GB RAM. 27” LED monitor. 8 virtual monitors configured in pairs.
- General web on Chrome (1) and general consoles (2). Stuff like filling out my time card, logging into Rackspace, etc.
- Email (3) and Google Talk (4).
- Project web on Chromium (5) and project consoles (6). Whatever development project I’m working one.
- Interuptions, web (7) and consoles (8). The stuff that gets done inbetween the stuff I’m supposed to be working on.
Laptop: Intel i5 @ 2.4GHz with 6 GB RAM. 17” widescreen display. 8 more virtual monitors configured in pairs.
- General (personal) web (9). My webmail clients, twitter, etc. Also, general consoles (10).
- Google talk (11) and network tests (12). Yes, it’s the same Google Talk account. Sometimes I don’t want to switch away on my main monitor.
- Version2beta project work browsers (13) and consoles (14).
- Overflow (15) and (16). Okay, I have more monitors than I need on my laptop. Usually need.
iPad: first generation. It has a processor and some memory, but I don’t recall how much.
- Just one display (17). It often has my Twitter client on it, but sometimes I’ll throw email on screen, especially if I need to look at one of my more obscure personal accounts.
Dell 19” widescreen (18). Currently sitting on the floor next to my desk, unused. I need to buy an HDMI cable for my main system so I can run this one off the secondary output.

I configure CCSM (Compiz Configuration Settings Manager) to use Ctl-Alt-Arrows to move me from virtual monitor to virtual monitor, alt-tab (and alt-shift-tab) to get me between applications on my current workspace, and alt-super-tab (and alt-super-shift-tab) to switch me between all applications on all virtual monitors. It’s almost as fast as moving my eyes from one screen to the next.

QM is Quintessential Mischief LLC, my wife’s company. She fights for the user. ↩
Version2beta LLC is my company. I’ve occasionally worked at it full-time, but at the moment, I’m putting only a few hours a month into it. ↩
I’m Web Infrastructure Manager at Top Floor Tech, which means I get to design awesome high performance hosting environments for standard and custom applications, and develop the web applications that need them. ↩

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