To those with 2+ monitors on your machine: What's your use case, and how much does it actually boost your productivity?
I'm mainly curious about software developers here, or anyone else whose computer is somewhat central to their life, be it professional or hobbyist.
I only have two monitors—one directly in front of me, and another to the right of it, angled toward me. For web development, I keep my editor on the main screen, and anything auxiliary (be that a dev build, a video, StackOverflow, etc.) on the side screen.
I wouldn't mind a third monitor, and if I had one, I'd definitely use it for log/output, since currently it's a floating window that I shuffle around however necessary. It could be smaller than the other two, and I might even turn it vertical so I could split the screen between output and a terminal, configuring a AutoHotKey script to focus the terminal.
The thing I've always noticed about getting more monitors is that you never really think you need one more monitor until you end up getting one somehow. After that you start getting used to the extra space and it feels wrong to go back to having less. When I originally had one monitor I was just used to that and didn't see anything wrong with it. Once I got two monitors I again felt good and got used to it. It was really nice to be able to watch stuff while playing games or have Unity and Visual Studio on separate screens at the same time. Eventually I got a nicer monitor and decided to go up to 3 monitors which again felt really nice and I found uses for all 3. That's where I'm at now and I don't have plans to get anymore but if I ever got a newer monitor there's a good chance I would end up giving 4 a try cause why let one of my older but still good monitors go to waste. And I imagine I would still be able to find uses for the extra space. I feel like at some point there is a limit but at least so far every time I've gained more monitor space even when I'm not sure what I would use it for I always end up using that extra space for something.
see, this is what i thought, until i started using a WM on a laptop and found that i REALLY liked it. I would still probably use three screens, but going from one screen to three, or vice versa, would be pretty minor. Everything is just SO much easier with a proper tiling WM that it becomes a non issue from the get go lol.