By Suzana USB to DVI Adapters – Do They Increase Productivity?
It highly depends on what your line of work is like. If you’re a professional in the software industry, chances are you’ll benefit from the additional screen space. Source-code and debug information is invaluable to have at hand while the result runs on a separate window. However, that’s not all you can do to increase your productivity with multi-monitor setups made possible by USB to DVI adapters.
Junior developers make a good use of documentation on one screen, source code at another and the compiled result on another monitor. This setup takes three displays at least, but greatly reduces the time any aspiring or established developer spends switching back and forth between displays.
Other Professions
Another profession, which profits tremendously from the extra displays is that of graphic designers’. Photoshop tools go to separate, cheaper monitors, while the main canvas sits on the 2560 x 1440 S-IPS 30″ color calibrated panel, which is connected to the main ‘native’ video output.
Copy and article writers don’t need extra monitors. The rule of thumb in this case is if you produce text, you’re likely to lose productivity with every extra screen added. Editors may profit from the additional screen real estate; they can have the piece of text they edit at one screen and resource for fact-checking on other displays.
Writing requires solitude and a great focus on the piece at hand. Any extra displays would most likely act mostly as distraction, and you can’t do much to help the issue; there is nothing work-related you can put there and there are no IM windows that won’t distract you.
System administrators love to –and have to, frankly– keep a finger on everything at once, and there is no such thing as ‘enough’ screen space for all the diagnostic software they tend to run at any given time. The definition of ‘enough’, for a system administrator, equals to that of ‘more’.
Conclusion
Extra screen space doesn’t necessarily boost productivity, because of the different requirements for each type of work. Where more displays are needed, the more screens there are the better. They directly relate to work efficiency in certain professions, especially those related to software development and Computer Aided Design (CAD).
On laptops, you can’t just add extra screens, due to the limited number of signal outputs on the typical portable computer. USB to DVI external video adapters help you add more and more monitors until you have enough. Or until you reach the maximum supported number, which is six on DisplayLink-chip based devices.
