Multimon? Three is perfect. Four is painful.

Not too long after beginning my programming career, I worked for a dot-com company that bought Matrox G400 dual-head video cards for all employees, along with two 19" monitors. Those of us who use multi-mon setups know that once you move from one monitor to two, it's very difficult to be happy with just one.

Well ever since about the year 2000, I've felt like I needed another monitor. It's not that two was all that great - it's just what I was used to. I kept feeling like I could be more productive with a third monitor.

Earlier this year, I bought a third L90D+ Samsung LCD monitor along with a second GeForce 7800GTX video card. I happened to have an Asus motherboard that supports dual PCI Express x16, so I could just drop in a second full-speed card. Combine those items with an older 17" LCD I had around and voila. Four screens: 5120 pixels across and 1024 high.

The gamers and multi-mon users in the crowd are probably nodding heads, "Yes, nice rig," but I encountered a serious problem. There was too much room!

Yes, that's right. I had to move my head too much to see all the screens. I'd put something in the fourth monitor waaaay over there and I'd get a crick in my neck from looking over that far. Eventually I found myself putting nothing in it. Then I turned it off. Finally, I removed it.

So lesson learned: For those of us in the dual-monitor club, three monitors is an awesome upgrade. But stop there. Your neck will thank you for it.