I recently purchased a 19in. LCD flat-screen to replace my cheap little 15in. job. The big screen is excellent for editing code because the resolution is that much higher and I was all-ready to give the smaller monitor to one of my children when I realized I had an old matrox PCI video card hanging around somewhere. I found it, plugged in and attached the 15in. LCD monitor to it.
What an incredible difference! I am convinced that the combination of both monitors is probably ten times more useful than just replacing one monitor with a larger one. Of course, having the 19in. screen is great for editing code but to be able to drag stuff from one monitor to another is a real boon. Now, when I read newsgroups and click on a link Internet explorer pops up on the second monitor and doesn't obscure the newsgroup. I can run a virtual machine in full-screen mode on the second monitor to test longhorn or whidbey. The readable area of both screens multiplies the usefulness of the display rather than simply adding to it.
Of course, the secondary display will not handle some graphics tasks because the matrox card is a bit long in the tooth but for text and simple graphics it's adequate. I cannot play a DVD movie on the secondary screen for example but I can play one on the main screen and still browse the Internet on the other.
As the title of this post suggests, this is probably the best upgrade I've ever given my computer and would highly recommend it to anyone that spends a long time switching between windows as I do.
