I think I have decided to get dual monitors for my primary desktop machine. I currently have a 20" 4:3 aspect ratio Viewsonic flat screen monitor. This monitor is used for all the machines on my 8 port KVM setup. Unfortunately, I have to toggle between DVI-D and analog settings when I switch between my two most used machines.
When I install the dual monitors, I will remote desktop into the secondary machine and run it full screen on one of the monitors while running the primary machine on the other monitor. When I am not actively running something on the secondary machine I will have an extremely wide desktop. When I open machines three through eight I will treat them as I do my secondary machine. I might possibly be able to remove the KVM from the setup.
The monitors that I will be buying later this week are the Dell 24" 16:9 aspect ration monitors. They run at a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 so I will be able to watch 1080p images on each. The total desktop will be 3840 x 1200!
What is interesting about this setup is that I will have to upgrade my graphics card. My current card is an ATI 9800 Pro with 128MB of video RAM. It was quite the card a few years ago when I bought it. Sadly I have not been keeping up to date with all of the changes in the graphics card industry.
I know I don't need the latest and greatest card. I will rarely be playing games. I use the XBox 360 for that. The card must support dual DVI outputs. It also needs a minimum of 256MB of video RAM and I may get a 512MB card just to be sure. I will be upgrading the machine to Vista shortly.
I suspect that I will go with an NVidea card this time. They seem to be putting out the most dependable cards lately. Of course in six months this will see saw back to ATI more than likely. I will investagate these cards over the weekend and will update this thread when the pieces are in place later this month.