Second monitor for laptop

I'm going to be starting a new career very soon, and I've become accustomed to using multiple monitors in my current job in the military. I have found myself to be much more productive with 2+ monitors and would like to keep using two. I have a laptop that I plan to keep using in my new job that has a 15.5 in display, a 21 in monitor seems like it would dwarf my laptop and throw me off.

If you guys run a secondary monitor with a laptop, whats your setup like? Any recommendations on sizes?

Thanks!

Well, it depends on your laptop. Some can run multiple external monitors without any problems. My setup is a dock with two identical external monitors, but I don't actually use the laptop screen.

I have worked with 2 comparable monitors and a laptop next to a 21" monitor. Depending on your purpose, the unequal ones can be a trial. Especially when you want to create one, wider image, unequal monitors make it awkward.

There is no dock available for my laptop, that I know of or have found at least. It has one HDMI and VGA port.

I connect my 50" tv to it at home to use for watching recorded shows and it works like a charm so I'm not too worried about it being able to drive a second monitor, just trying to decide on the size. Its next to impossible to find a 15" monitor to have equal sized displays, not that I would want to buy a 15" monitor. May a 19" wouldn't be too big.

You can certainly run one monitor off HDMI and another off VGA, though the image sharpness will suffer on the VGA.

That's probably what I'd do in your case.

I have a 20" and a 27" monitor here in the office. I keep my email up on the laptop monitor, my main document on the 27" and all the reference documents on the 20". I love it.

At the office I use a 15" laptop with one or two 22" external monitors, depending on whether the second one is needed at the other end of my cube for system configuration work. Here's what I see:

The differences in size and resolution don't seem to bother me much, although being able to have the same resolution on both screens would possibly eliminate some eye strain.

The only real problem is that I have to keep each window completely on one screen or the other or the size mismatch between screens is tough to deal with.

A lot of the programmers and tech writers seem to prefer having one of their monitors in portrait mode and the other in landscape mode. They would be kicking and screaming if somebody tried to tell them the monitors all had to be the same.

PugslyCat said:

A lot of the programmers and tech writers seem to prefer having one of their monitors in portrait mode and the other in landscape mode. They would be kicking and screaming if somebody tried to tell them the monitors all had to be the same.

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I've read an article by an author who uses 3 monitors. A laptop, a landscape monitor for study/research notes, and a portrait monitor for the manuscript writing. Interesting thought.

I never thought about turning one of my monitors landscape...

tried the 27" way too disorienting. I think turning the 20" portrait would be better, but I don't have the mounting hardware right now.

I've never had to deal with the laptop issue. I've been using 2 monitors for about 12 years now. I'm definitely not as effective with one smaller screen. I'm actually trying to get approved for a third at work right now due to some new tools I've started using. I've always used mine in landscape, and kept them at the same resolution. For one thing, most of the tools I use are schematic in nature, and they need to be used in landscape mode. The other issue with portrait mode is ergonomics and eye strain. It's a bit of a pain to adjust your line of sight, and it's really hard to keep a landscape monitor low enough in your field of vision that it doesn't cause eyestrain from looking up at it. I would only consider going portrait if I could do so productively with all of my monitors.

All that being said, if you are using Windows 10, with their new window snapping features, using a single larger monitor (27" or larger) is pretty much just as effective as using two.