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Do Developers Really Need a Second Monitor? 1002

jammag writes "It was an agonizing moment: a developer arrived at work to realize his second monitor had been taken (given to the accounting dept., to add insult to injury). Soon, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth began. As this project manager recounts, developers feel strongly — very strongly — about needing a second monitor (maybe a third?) to work effectively. But is this just the posturing of pampered coders, or is this much screen real estate really a requirement for today's developers?"

Comment Re:EVO, developed at CalTech for physics community (Score 1) 170

We've had great luck using EVO in our research group, and I've helped set up "videoconferencing" computers in a few rooms on campus. Take a relatively modern computer with a video card (we've been using nVidia GeForce 9500 GT cards, or something comparable), connect a webcam and a projector, buy a decent echo-canceling microphone/speaker (we've had good luck with Phoenix Audio Quattro2 devices (www.phnxaudio.com)) and you can have a decent videoconferencing setup for not too much money. EVO also has support for connecting to SIP and H.323 systems, so you can use your EVO setup as a plain H.323 client or allow H.323 users (Polycom systems or whatever) to join your EVO meeting. And all meetings include telephone bridge access so users who have old computers, no microphones, or microphones that cause echo can join the meeting, too. You can also record all the audio and video streams to your hard drive and play the entire meeting back later. All for free. The EVO website suffers from a bit of poor English, and the user interface is a bit to "happy" for me (lots of colorful icons all over the place), but if you can overlook that, it really is a great system that's been working remarkably well for us.

Comment Re:Vodka (Score 1) 770

Regardless of how well-known the secret key combo is, it's still a real dickish move for the window manager to hide the OK buttons on dialog boxes from you. The magical Gnomes in your netbook are laughing as you struggle to deal with their crap.

Comment Re:Vodka (Score 1) 770

The first time Ubuntu displays a dialog box that can't entirely fit on the screen, a helpful message should pop up and explain: 1. How to view the entire contents of the window. 2. Where to read more about window management in Ubuntu. 3. How to turn off this particular helpful message (or all helpful messages). The operating system is certainly capable of detecting when it's put a window on the screen that is too big to fit and can't be resized, and it should instantly provide help with this. Expecting a user to find the help system and drill down to section 2.3.2 is a bit much, especially when their desktop is now stuck on 400x300 (or whatever they've mistakenly selected).

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