[adamtulinius]

Imo. it comes down to the window manager, with regards to productivity.

One ultra wide (I got the Dell 38") has the added benefit of making it possible to have the primary app in the center, with less important stuff occupying the far ends of the screen.

[snazz]

So much more has to do with window managers, software choices, etc than simply the number of pixels you have on your display(s). I find that reading long lines of code is more comfortable on my 1920x1200 Dell desktop monitor than on my ThinkPad’s 1366x768, but my productivity has a lot more to do with the WM and Emacs configuration than number of monitors.

[GordonS]

I use Dell monitors and the Dell Display Manager works well for me, letting me 'virtually split' monitors so windows snap to them.

[zone411]

How about 3 monitors?

[maze-le]

The correct number of monitors to have is always n+1.

[rlonstein]

> The correct number of monitors to have is always n+1.

This applies to bicycles and motorcycles too.

[z0r]

That's my setup, 3 vertical 24" monitors. Same benefit as having the 'main' thing in the middle on a big screen. Text editor takes up the full middle display at most times, a terminal (or stack of terminals) to the left for compiling / examining debug output, and the rightmost display is for hacker news. I look at the rightmost display too often.

In all seriousness the tiling window manager I use (xmonad, but any other would probably do) is more important than the number of displays I have. But it is nice to be able to use 2 vertical displays side by side to do an eyeball diff of output at times, or to keep reference material visible on the display right by the code I'm working on.