I can’t recommend dual monitors enough.

My one-year-old son Andrew loves to mash at my keyboard and move my mouse around—imitating daddy, or daddy’s toys are the coolest—and he recently changed my desktop wallpaper. I guess my old wallpaper was getting old. Anyway, as I tried to make sure that he hadn’t changed anything else, I stumbled upon a feature I didn’t know my laptop had—apparently my video card can support dual monitors, and not just an external, duplicate version of my normal screen.

After making this discovery, I quickly set everything up, and I’m now cruising with twice the screen real estate.

Overall, my productivity has gone up. I did spend an hour downloading ridiculously awesome free dual-monitor desktop wallpapers, but the time savings in the long run will more than make up for it.

There are a couple guys at my work who have dual monitors, so I knew that it was nice, but until now, I haven’t had a chance to try it myself. In a word, wow. Talk about fun! I highly recommend it. You’ll spend so much less time digging around trying to find stuff that it will be worth the investment in an extra monitor and possibly video card.