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November 1, 2005
Make yourself more productive (I)
By far the best thing you can do to increase your productivity is to find a keyboard you find comfortable and learn to touch-type on it. I happen to love the IBM Model M (1391401) Keyboard. Don't run it over with your car and it will last longer than your wrists will. But it doesn't have a windows key, it is loud and firm, and is considerably larger than those modern keyboards, so this article isn't about keyboards. It is about monitors.
It has been a while since I've done any technology reviews, so I thought I share the I have a computer tricks that I use to get more done. Buy the best (highest resolution and largest) monitor you can afford, then buy another monitor, it needn't be as good, but if it is, all the better. You might need a more advanced video card then the one that came with your PC, but so be it. Get it all installed and run to Realtime Soft. and download Ultramon. Total cost is maybe $1000, averaged over the 3 year life of your computer is about a dollar a day. It will help you make the extra $700 a year you need to justify the investment and make computing more pleasurable as well. You are worth it, so go for it.
Once you have at least two monitors, you'll see how much time you wasted looking away from the monitor. You'll draft changes to a document while reviewing the original. You will get data out of tables in arcane formats and into Excel. You can manipulate and format charts until the fit perfectly into your presentations. Use Google desktop to find that document with the key statistic for your email to management. Browse the web while keeping an eye on that log file. Just try it, you'll see how great it is.
But multi-monitor setups aren't perfect our of the box, so you'll need Ultramon to fix a problem with multi-monitor work flow in windows that is so obvious, that I'm boggled that the Widows team didn't build it into windows. Without it, by default the task bar in windows only exists on the primary monitor. You can get the task bar to appear additionally on the other monitor, but Windows will only use it when the task bar on the primary monitor is full. You can see it below.
This doesn't make any sense as a metaphor. The task bar should represents a stack on the desktop. Having multiple monitors is like having multiple desks. If you had multiple desks would you keep all your documents in a stack on one desk? No, you'd break up tasks by desk, and manage each separately. That's what Ultramon's smart task bar lets you do, have a separate stack for each monitor.
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It also gives you a host of other features to make multi-monitor setups more pleasant. It has handy icons to maximize to the entire desktop and move applications between monitors. It also allows you to have a different background and screen saver on each monitor. Your multi-monitor video card might also allow some of this functionality, but I found those applications unstable and ill-designed.
Posted by OneEyedMan at November 1, 2005 3:27 PM
Comments
I guess I might as well throw a recommendation or two on the fire. First I agree whole-heartedly about having at least two monitors. Adding a monitor seems to make your computer roughly twice as useful, and I'm really shocked that they aren't standard in the workplace at this point.
When I'm stuck using windows I also find myself reliant on Virtual Dimension which allows you to have multiple desktops. (Since we are talking about having extra monitors that may be unclear. Virtual Dimension makes it so that if you hit a configuration key (say ctrl-2) it takes you to a new clean desktop, with no applications open on it . You can launch whatever you want and do your stuff, then if you hit ctrl-1 it takes you back to the other set of applications you had launched which are all just as you left them. Its very useful for organizing your work by tasks.)
Its also free.
The other piece of software which I find useful is Rock-It Launcher which was actually written by a friend of mine. It runs in the background and allows you to hit ctrl-return to pop up a "launch bar" you can then start typing any application or file name into it, which the app will try to auto complete. When you hit return it launches the selected application. Its a lifesaver for us refugees from the command line.
Posted by: giblfiz ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.belligerati.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 2, 2005 11:48 AM
Rock it launcher looks cool, I'll have to check it out when they roll out .net around here.
The thing that always drives me crazy about virtual desktops is that the implementation always is so frustating. I haven't tried Virtual Dimension, but every one seems to not remember where you stuck a desktop, play poorly with multiple monitors, have a horrible interface, crash, leaving your applications permenantly hidder or suffer from some other malady. Though YMMV, I don't think I'm missing out much, because I rarely need more that three open applications. I simply devote one monitor to holding all my deep list of minor applications that I'm not currently using.
Another application I'd like to highlight is PureText (http://stevemiller.net/puretext/). One of the great things about windows is how tightly the document model allows you to paste your work across documents. Certainly, adding charts and pictures to documents has come a long way from the Word Perfect, Harvard Graphics, and Lotus 123 days. But as a side effect, it can be difficult to get just plain old text to work with. Anyone who has ever tried to email a clip from a website knows how annoying it is to just get a peice of unformated text. That's where pure text comes it. It allows you to remap a key chord (say control-insert) that will paste unformated test. Control-v will still paste the formated text.
That's been very helpful since I discovered it on
lifehacker:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/windows/download-of-the-day-puretext-127194.php
Posted by: TheOneEyedMan at November 2, 2005 1:36 PM
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