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by William Van Winkle |
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Multi-Monitor Mania Ironically, when we at RAM sat down to plan this article, multiple-monitor deployment was nearly an afterthought. Little did we understand or appreciate at the time that this particular niche is without question the most accessible to resellers of any size as well as being the largest in terms of volume opportunity. And not just the largest by a pinch. We mean a gaping, mind-numbing chasm. Unlike signage and touchscreens, multi-monitor is something virtually any user can find value in—corporate or consumer, it doesn't matter. And unlike many desktop enhancements, the primary benefit here is not about useless eye candy or improvements in gaming. (In fact, only a small minority of games are designed to make proper use of more than one monitor.) The bottom line with multi-monitor is about fundamental productivity gains. When you spread a desktop across two or more screens, you can see more, toggle windows less, make clearer decisions, and accomplish more work in less time. Scientific studies proving this point are still rare, but the evidence is starting to accumulate. The first major finding was in a study conducted in 2003 by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI, and the University of Utah called "Productivity and Multi-Screen Displays." The results stated: "Participants in the study considered multi-screen configurations significantly more useful than single screens and preferred multiple monitor setups on every measure of usability. They found them 29% more effective for tasks, 24% more comfortable to use in tasks, and found it 39% easier to move around sources of information."
Next up is a series of more recent studies conducted by the Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment (VIBE) group within Microsoft Research, which created a 42" widescreen display with 3072 x 768 resolution—essentially three side-by-side XGA screens blended into one curved Plexiglas sheet. Microsoft's investigation found that users' productivity increased anywhere from 9% to 50% depending on the application or activity. Moreover, the group discovered that a broader display field can improve the user's memory. "There's something about engaging the peripheral vision that improves your spatial memory of what has gone on," noted one Microsoft researcher. Investigators were also surprised to find that women achieve greater spatial recognition and navigation improvement than men from a larger display field. Jon Peddie Research also polled several thousand people on many aspects of multi-monitor adoption and usage. "We did a study on efficiency gains from multi-monitor use," notes company president Jon Peddie, "and the gains ranged from 0% to 100% or more. The overall standard deviation settled in around 25% to 30%, and this is for users of everything from everyday productivity programs to high-end graphics packages. This is why I cannot understand why the monitor guys are not all over this. They see the same data you and I do, yet they don't seem to push multi-monitor usage for some reason." By and large, we would agree. When's the last time you saw a manufacturer or distributor mount an ad campaign based around multi-monitor benefits backed by a discount bundle? Tour the major monitor manufacturer sites and you'll be hard pressed to find so much as a case study on multi-monitor, much less a white paper or dedicated site area. Not until we stumbled across a dual 19" NEC LCD setup on an Ergotron stand bundled with an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 285 (more on these items below) at CDW for $1,169.95 did we find one smart exception to the rule. NEC Display, seemingly the much-needed innovator in the business display world, did offer us one case study regarding Software Spectrum, a multi-national IT services provider. Software Spectrum outfitted 500 employees worldwide with dual-monitor setups. Customer service reps immediately reported a minimization in scrolling, navigation, and printing necessary in order to view pertinent customer information. Customer hold times went down, as did printing costs, productivity went up, and there was no negative impact on labor costs. NEC's case study also notes that Forbes.com experienced a 50% drop in editorial production times among copy editors who adopted dual monitors. Irresistible, right? Every customer should want one...or two or three. You would think so. But the question is: Why is there so little multi-monitor demand? "There's a whole lot of ignorance and stupidity going on with regard to multi-monitors," says Geoff Amthor, president of Digital Tigers, one of the leading manufacturers of multi-monitor solutions. "Anyone who's ever used it will never go back. It's like you walked in and your IQ jumped 20 points. What you can conceive in your mind you can now see better, and you're not so much like a dog chasing its tail jumping around from place to place.
"So what's the market for multi-monitor?" Amthor continues. "Well, it's everyone. If you think when you use a computer, if you're not like a teller just pounding out some rote activity, you're the target market. Seventy percent of computer users should be using multiple monitors. The reason that's not happening is not rational. It's not economic, because people have the money to do this. So any kind of market projection is merely guessing at the question of when are people going to stop being stupid. When will the light reach their brains? I mean, Forbes recently did a piece on Bill Gates, and they showed him in his office with three monitors, and he's like a kid in a candy store going on about the productivity benefits of this. And I'm like, man, what took you so long? We've been doing this for over ten years! I don't know why it didn't occur to him sooner. I don't know why it hasn't occurred to everyone. Our competitor is not Dell; it's ignorance." Seventy percent of users perhaps should be using multiple monitors, but, according to Peddie's study, only 32% of users polled actually do. (That number rises to 41% among road warriors.) Moreover, Peddie estimates that less than 3 million currently operational systems, or under 3% of all systems in use, are equipped with multiple monitors. Those two sets of statistics may seem to conflict, but remember that, among other factors, a user might have four or five PCs but only outfit one of them with multiple displays. "We asked the people in our survey if they used multiple monitors," says Peddie, "and for those who didn't, we asked why not. They told us it was too expensive, no desk space, too complicated. On some occasions, I even asked people, ‘Did you know you could do this for free if you just buy a monitor?' And they all said, ‘Uh, no. Nobody told us that.'" In fact, nearly all PCs built in the last seven years, laptops included, are capable of running multiple monitors with little if any additional hardware. Most of the software necessary to enable this is available for free from various manufacturers, and monitors continue to drop in price. The issue largely comes down to the perception of costs, desk space, and ignorance regarding multi-monitor benefits. Awareness of capabilities is no longer an issue since, according to Peddie's research, 95% of users are now aware that more than one monitor can run from a single PC. As Peddie indicates, the cost to go from single- to dual-monitor output (cost of the second monitor excepted) is potentially nil. All but the lowest-end video cards now come equipped with two display ports, and enabling these for multi-monitor use involves little more than checking an option or two in the display adapter driver's properties. In modern integrated graphics chipsets from ATI and NVIDIA, users can add a dual-output graphics card based on the same manufacturer's GPU, leave the IGP output enabled, and suddenly have triple-monitor capability. (Unfortunately for business users, this triple-head capability is not currently possible when pairing an ATI- or NVIDIA-based adapter card with an Intel IGP chipset.) Taking it up a notch, now that we have affordable dual graphics slot motherboards based on ATI's CrossFire and NVIDIA's SLI, you need only install a pair of mainstream cards (likely under $300 total) to obtain quad-monitor support. But what do you do beyond triple- or quad-monitor output? That's where we cross over into the realm of professional display solutions. In the professional multi-monitor segment, NVIDIA is the name to know. The company now controls over 80% of the space, having knocked former titan Matrox into the background and driven has-been heavyweight 3Dlabs out of the pro graphics market altogether. NVIDIA's Quadro NVS family, produced and marketed through PNY Technologies (www.pny.com) in the U.S., specializes in 2D output across many displays. There are three basic cards in today's NVS line, all of which use passive cooling—a good thing to keep in mind for clients who value low noise. The Quadro NVS 280 supports two displays via a dongle from one external port and uses the 32-bit PCI bus. The NVS 285 is the same 21W part, only migrated into your choice of PCI Express x1 or x16 formats. The now-defunct PCIe-based NVS 400 added a second GPU in order to drive four displays, and now the NVS 440 adds a bridge chip between the two GPUs for better performance, particularly in 3D applications. Like the NVS 285, the 31W NVS 440 comes in x1 ($449) and x16 ($499) versions. According to NVIDIA, most users won't realize any performance difference between the two editions in 2D applications, but constriction may set in with 3D programs. Overall, the NVS 440 performs in league with the consumer-level GeForce 6200 or 6600 parts, so make sure buyers understand that this is a work card, not a gaming solution. Perhaps you're wondering why anyone would pay $499 for a quad-output card when substantially faster performance can be had across four monitors with SLI for under $300. When we popped this question to Shawn Worsell, NVIDIA product manager for Quadro, he started off with a few notes on increased latency when communicating between cards across the PCI Express bus, but having done a fair bit of SLI testing in-house, we weren't biting too hard on this hook. Ultimately, the real answer comes down to scalability. "If you need more than four monitors," says Worsell, "what's your solution if you go with discrete GeForce cards? You're stuck. But with the x16 440 plus a x1 440, you can have up to eight displays driven by two cards. Use two x16 cards on an SLI motherboard along with the x1 440 and you can go up to 12 displays. You're only bound by the number of slots. Our NVS solution has the scalability you just can't get from a consumer product." NVIDIA produces separate drivers for the Quadro and GeForce families, but there's enough overlap between the two that you can, for instance, run a x1 NVS 440 card alongside a GeForce 6600 and still get six-monitor output—seven if you're on a 6100/6150-based IGP motherboard. Next logical question: Who on Earth needs more than four monitors? Well, even for word processing, multiple browser windows, Acrobat, and Photoshop, this author long ago outgrew two displays and now wonders how long it will be before three feels too cramped to bear. A large and increasing number of creative professionals are in the same boat. Surely, there's a level of diminishing returns when adding displays, but so long as each new monitor yields enough gain in productivity to justify its cost, why not add it? Traditionally, the leading market for multi-monitor deployment is financial traders, who strive to make money on the information they can see and assess at once. The little bit more data a trader takes in could make a $10,000 difference in just one day. This is why the finance sector hardly blinks at the added expense of going multi-monitor. To sink its hooks even further into this primary multi-monitor market, NVIDIA did some fancy tweaking and enabled user profiles within the display drivers. So a trader can walk up to any eight-monitor desk, for example, log in as himself, and his applications and desktop arrangement will come up exactly the same way regardless of their location. If you're dealing with three, four, five displays, you don't want to have to rearrange and reconfigure everything each time you switch offices and log in. These profiles are a great value-added productivity angle inherent to the NVS line.
"After traders," says Digital Tigers' Amthor, "our next big market is military, and then it quickly gets more horizontal. We get a lot of people who trade on the side in their home offices and so on. But doctors, lawyers, Web developers, designers—these people all love multi-monitor. Then we see a lot of groups who think they should economize on their monitors when in fact the opposite is true. The hardest areas to crack are the general business markets because they're so locked down. Some people are stuck in this movement that says there should be no desktops at all, only laptops, and if there's going to be a desktop, it better cost less than 500 dollars. These people don't want to be innovative. But even within these companies, there are areas you can break into."
Digital Tigers focuses all of its product families on multi-monitor systems. Most notable is the company's Zenview line of multi-screen displays, running from the two-screen Zenview Duo 17A (twin 17" LCDs; $899) up through the Zenview Arena Ultra HD ($7,499), comprised of a 30" main panel flanked by two 20.1" LCDs in portrait orientation all topped by three landscape 20.1" screens. The hottest seller, according to Amthor, is the Zenview Trio 19S ($1,799), a triptych of 1280 x 1024 (SXGA) 19" screens mounted on one stand. Digital Tigers uses Samsung for all of its displays, although the 19S uses the highest spec parts, featuring a 1000:1 contrast ratio and 178-degree viewing angle. Within the product line, you'll find some interesting value points. For example, there's a $600 spread between the Zenview Trio 20S (three 20.1" screens) and the 21S (three 21.3" screens), even though the resolution between the two SKUs, and thus the amount of information that can be displayed, is identical. One thing that differentiates multi-monitor vendors is the refinement of their software. Multiple monitor support in Windows is present but rudimentary. NVIDIA gives us a better sense of refinement with its Quadro NVS drivers. But Digital Tigers and its Zenview Manager title (free with displays; $75 separately) show how multi-monitor should be done. As you know, if you run more than six or seven apps at once, their taskbar buttons start to condense so much that you can no longer tell what each button represents. Zenview Manager creates a separate taskbar for each monitor. You can not only assign applications to open on a specific monitor but resize, position them precisely, and save the arrangement for reuse on each new system startup. There are plenty of other, smaller features, but one of our favorites is the ability to span a wallpaper across all screens rather than the usual Windows approach of cloning the same shot to every panel.
Another of our favorites in the Digital Tigers lineup is the SideCar series. SideCars are PCMCIA-based boxes (ExpressCard is coming soon) housing NVIDIA- or Matrox-based display adapters. Different models allow for up to four monitors to link into the SideCar. Add in the laptop's own screen and you now have a five-screen display system. For presenters who want to run multi-monitor setups in different locations, SideCars are an easy way to leave bulky monitors at the various sites and only haul one notebook around to power all of them in turn. Now, don't get into serious multi-monitor configurations and think that any ordinary system is up to the task of powering all of those apps running on all of those displays. Streaming video may be 2D, but it's still bandwidth- and processing-intensive. John Peddie told us that he firmly advocates a 512MB video card for powering a triple- or quad-display array. Geoff Amthor takes a broader, system-wide approach. He cites a minimum of 2GB of system RAM, 256MB on the graphics card, and dual processing, whether that's dual-core or dual-CPU. In fact, if you want to start selling multi-monitor into larger accounts, you'd do well to study and/or resell Digital Tigers' line of Stratosphere display workstations. Currently, the flagship of this family is the Hyperion, a dual Opteron beast founded on an nForce Pro motherboard, NVIDIA GeForce or Quadro graphics, at least 2GB of memory, twin 500W silent power supplies, and a 1,500VA TrippLite UPS. Amthor notes that inclusion of a voltage regulating UPS is now standard on all models, and since implementing this step Digital Tigers has not had a single power-related support issue.
The company is also obsessive about reducing noise output, knowing that users willing to pay several thousand dollars on a display system are also likely to not want system noise disturbing their concentration. Digital Tigers even goes so far as to import a special Xeon CPU heatsink from Europe that is not available anywhere else in the States. Also noteworthy is that Digital Tigers negotiated a zero dead pixel warranty policy from Samsung, which supplies all of the company's panels. Digital Tigers is able to pass this policy along to resellers. Such measures are what make the difference between an exceptional multi-monitor solution and a passable one. In the end, though, don't underestimate the power of a passable multi-monitor solution for those with modest needs. To anyone who has never moved beyond the single-screen paradigm, going multiple is like achieving enlightenment. "If you can go to your customer and set them up with multiple monitors on their desktop," says Amthor, "they're going to remember you for the rest of their life. You'll be like their first girlfriend. The trick is how to get this in front of them. Walking around beating the drum on the street is not going to get people to buy it. People don't understand why they would want to do that. You have to show them. If you walk in the door with a vertical solution for a radiologist or a real estate agency or whatever, and you show them how your solution can be even more effective and efficient on a multi-monitor setup, the system and software may get you in the door but the multi-monitor will close the sale because you've got a vastly more exciting solution than everybody else. Stick with what you know, what you're good at doing already. Multi-monitor just makes it better." Naturally, Digital Tigers is not the first or last word in multi-monitor. While the company invests a considerable amount of energy into efficient packaging, kit setup, and so forth, competitors in the space abound. For instance, Ergotron (www.ergotron.com), a 20-year veteran in this space sold through major channel distributors, specializes in display mountings. The DS100 Triple-Monitor Desk Stand retails for $299 and mounts three VESA standard LCDs of 19" or less on a single base. In June, Ergotron will debut its Dual ($269) and Triple ($299) Display Lift Stands, which allow for up to five inches of display height adjustment with fingertip ease for users who want to fine-tune their ergonomic positioning. Even without such extras, stands are an affordable, no-brainer value-add once the multi-monitor concept has won a new devotee. When you get to three monitors, desk space starts to vanish in earnest and cable clutter takes over. Good stands will remedy this. The Trident XP2-based VTBook from VillageTronic (www.vtbook.com) is a direct rival to the SideCar that can add up to two additional monitors to a laptop's display courtesy of a CardBus slot. The Magma PCI slot expansion enclosures from Mobility Electronics (www.mobl.com) offer an intriguing way to add multiple display cards to a single system for additional monitor support. Of course, Matrox (www.matrox.com) is still cranking out dual-, triple-, and quad-head cards, and Colorgraphic (www.appiangraphics.com) FireMV cards leverage ATI's 2D workstation chips in dual- and quad-monitor card configurations. With the hardware settled, you can then move into multi-display presentation software, screen savers, management utilities, and much more. One of the best best consolidated link collections we've found for multi-monitor resources is at www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/products.asp. Check it out and be amazed at the dazzling opportunities waiting for you. |
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