Go big or go multiple?

Everyone on my team is pushing to get 30″ screens are part of their equipment upgrades. I can certainly understand this. We all get top of the line machines automatically and so what is the cool expensive thing to get your employer to buy you? 30 inches of 30-bit color of course! Now having screen real estate is critical for developers, I can totally dig that. I was just reading Ryan Block’s blog post, 30-inches: too much screen?, and I realized that I actually prefer my dual 19-inchers over a larger screen. While having that break in the middle is a distraction for some, for me it is a boon. Having visual studio stretching over my entire visual field is just going to cause eye and neck strain. With two monitors, I choose my organization so I can focus on one at a time, but have the other handy for reference. When I’m debugging, I have the app on one monitor and Visual Studio on the other. When I’m developing, I’ll have Visual Studio on one monitor and Firefox or Acrobat on the other with documentation. When I’m not coding, I have Outlook on one monitor and Firefox on the other. For me, I’m never really focused on a single application, I always have a primary and secondary application and so dual-monitors works for me.