If employees in your organization are spending a lot of time toggling back and forth among documents, email, instant messages, calendars and websites, they may need more than one monitor. Adding a second or third display to help workers manage their content is a growing tactic, reports Matt Richtel at The New York Times.

Last year 179 million monitors and 130 million desktop computers were sold, adding up to a greater number of displays per desk, according to Rhoda Alexander, analyst at the research firm IHS iSuppli. Monitors have become cheaper and thinner in the last few years, just as employees have been handed more communications avenues.

Chuck Rossi, an engineer at Facebook who uses three monitors, says that offering more--and larger--displays can be a good recruiting tactic. "Companies will pitch it" to job candidates, he said. "They know real estate is important. It shows they are serious about their engineers."

Between 30 and 40 percent of the employees at corporations buying products from NEC Display use more than one monitor. Whether multiple screens increases productivity depends in part on the nature of an employee's work. Research by the University of Utah (funded by NEC Display) revealed that when people are editing, using two monitors increases productivity.

On the other hand, scanning multiple screens could distract users from focusing on the task at hand, said David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. "There is 'thought-killing' going on," Meyer said. "Rome crashed and burned because it got too big. Go past that scale and you're going to wind up like Rome."

For more:
-Matt Richtel's article at The New York Times

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