He's not saying that larger monitors, or multiple monitors, do not make people more productive. What he is saying is that the study is meaningless based on how it was performed.

Plus, multiple monitors do not always make people more productive, nor does having a larger screen. It all depends on what you're doing on the computer (the task). Because if two make you more productive, then having 6 30" monitors on your desk should make you super-productive!

And did Apple decide to do this study AFTER they put back multiple monitor support on most of their desktops and laptops, or did they do the study and realized just doing mirroring on the iBook/iMac was useless?

Windows definitely have a habit of maximiazing windows. The firdt time I saw my dad (a windows user) maximize IE on a 20" screen I nearly cried for all the white space on along the sides...

Meanwhile I (a mac user, obviously) almost always work in a multi-window environment, and, yes, as compared to my 1024x768 iMac DV (From way back when), I'm more productive on my 1440x900 MBP. I can hardly stand working on a 1024x768 screen anymore, btw.

I have a 30" and a 20" on my G5. I am MUCH more productive than I was on the G4 with a single 20". I can have mail and other programs I refer to regularly on the 20" and still have the 30" for my main proggrams, ssh shell windows, etc that I am always flipping between.

In fact, if my new program I will start selling soon (Fedex shipping from your Mac [USA only for now]) sells well -- to be called Okuru, I will upgrade to a MacPro with 2x30" and a 23"

So he's a WEB guru, and the study was about general productivity. He complains that they didn't measure productivity in Excel properly, and later states the problem with the methodology is that the WEB doesn't work that way. Apparently, this guy has never worked in an office environment. I don't care about productivity when surfing the web. I care about it when I'm working in Excel. As for his statement that people don't perform the repetitive type of tasks that the study used? Again, he obviously has never worked in an office.

"Because if two make you more productive, then having 6 30" monitors on your desk should make you super-productive! "

Uh... no, not necessarily. Often times adding something (monitors here) can increase productivity (or whatever) to a certain point and then cap off (or at least the effect gets reduced) the more you add

Comes down to what we all know through experience but gets clumsy to prove when you get guys in lab coats peering through peepholes at human behaviour.

Having 2 monitors and/or the largest screen realestate has ALWAYS been the first step to greater productivity.

It only became a tendentious debating point when we entered that period when Apple, to cut costs or to force system upgrades, removed the multiple monitor support on most if not all models.

Oddly enough at exactly the same time PC users were discovering the advantages of multiple monitors when Windows gave it better support and many popular graphics cards offered it by default. I particularly think of those financial traders who would be lost without their side-by sides monitors, up to 3 in some cases.

Whislt it give the cpu that much more to process, most of the time it is doing nothing whilst you are reading the screen. The boost it gives you as the slowest link in the chain comes from simply letting you have the big picture all at once and letting you uncutter your screen from the palletitis of most apps.