That is not real. It is a movie set, no?

Have you ever considered building the same setup for anybody else, presuming the money was right?

congratulation..I’m very jealous

are you Polish ancestory btw?

Aiki: My surname isn’t of Polish origin but Croatian, actually.

Michael: I don’t think I could build a setup like my office for anyone else because the requirements of different individuals, the work they do, what they are most comfortable with, etc. differs so much that extreme setups like these are usually born out of a combination that is very much an individual choice. And I have to admit that I don’t actually build or put together most of the hardware (I leave that part up to my excellent dealer). At the most I will swap HD’s but that’s usually as close as I get to getting “into” the machines themselves.

What happens in case of a power failure? Do you have a very powerful UPS for backing up the whole system or just parts of it? How long is your system uptime record? (On which system?)

I have a few UPS units for the most critical systems. Isis and Osiris (the internet gateways and mini servers) both have an APC Back-UPS 700VA which sustains them and the modems and routers for a few minutes. They will shut down if there is only 3 minutes left on the UPS. A bigger APC Smart-UPS 5000VA ensures power for Argon and it will start its shutdown when only 10 minutes remain (Argon needs more time to shut down because each VM needs to shut down or go into stasis).

Many years ago I had a WinNT machine that I managed an uptime of over 17 months on but on average the uptime for Isis and Orisis is about 6-7 months. Within that time I usually do something like an upgrade to something that requires a reboot. The uptime for Argon is about 2-3 months on average. Also because it frequently undergoes maintenance. The other systems do not generally need to run 24/7 so they get powered on and off as-needed.

Can I move in with you?

Wow!

Very, very impressive system setup, I’m working on a MMO and was considering something very similar to that, but now that I see you how much power and hardware you’ve needed I’m a little turned off. Maybe 4/5 screens lol. This must have taken a fair amount of work, can you go into how you managed to get all the systems interconnected a little more? Well good luck on all your future projects and it’d be very interesting to hear more about this “dream home”, keep posting

Woah!! 1 question that I didnt see answered, How long has it taken you to build up the career and money to built that whole setup?

@Paarth: Sure. I’ve updated the FAQ for that.

@Justin: I have a career? It all started back in the early and mid 80’s while playing around with 3D computer graphics, at a time when the idea of computer generated movies was an unattainable dream. In 1989 I started my own business in production of 3D animation, video production, etc. and things sort of went from there. Because there wasn’t much, or any, software for these purposes I always found myself writing my own tools and over the years that evolved towards me focusing more on development than production.

The home office is a business expense so the money that went into its stages is something I never kept track of. Every year older workstations or servers are replaced with newer ones to the point where every 3 years almost all the hardware will have been changed or upgraded in some way. The thing I’ve learned is that hardware never gets cheaper, it stays the same. A decent workstation ran about $10-15k some 10 years ago, and it still does today. Of course the newer stuff outperforms what came before it, but the general cost seems to remain much in the same ballpark.

Mint system, just came across this page with StumbleUpon, I’ve never seen anything like it.

That is one sexy display, and I have total geek envy. I love your naming system, too. My sister tends to name things after mythological characters, and I name mine after elements or other scientific terms. My main system is Technetium, his external drive is Fluorine, and my flash drive is Indium.

Mr. Stefan Didak,

This is to inform you that it has been brought to our notice that you have been guilty of consumption of more photons than has been alloted per individual, per year, in the span of a single day. In lieu of this gross over-consumption we hereby call upon you to supplant the value of these photons by submitting unto the God of light a sum of $1 per photon, failure of which would cause immediate and complete cease of supply of any electrons to your sources of power. For further information regarding the exact details of usage and payment method please revert back to the email address associated with this note.

Kind regards,
From the Office of The Esteemed God Hyperion,

Dear Hyperion, Thanks for the notice but you are misinformed about my consumption of photons. I have been awarded the honorary title of God of Color after doing color correction work on high definition video material and as such I have a standing agreement with The Light One. To preserve the photonic balance I have been using diet-photons for quite some time now and thereby have dramatically lowered the overall consumption, allowing me to put in more photon emitter fields (a.k.a. TFT screens) on the deesktop. My recent stay in a nuclear power plant has also granted me the capability to be a source of light. Granted, it is a greenish color, but it works. This also allows me to put some photon radiation back into circulation.

Yo,
This looks even better than the Traffic Control Center! This is exactly how I’d like my place made but I just do not have room real-estate to do it yet

Nice job mate,

Cheers,
Petar
http://www.VistaJuice.com

Seriously, I completely geeked out on your system and am suffering from serious geek envy… sigh.. you lucky sod you!

You are my hero! And not just because of your setup.
Firstly I’ve always been interested in 3D Animation, I played aroung with Maya PLE and the student edition of Softimage XSI but I unfortunatly dont seem to be creative enough to go anywhere with it (and also too poor to afford any kind of 3D animation corses).
Secondly I’ve always been interested in programming, I’m a little better with that, I’ve taught myself a little bit of .Net and am now experimenting with Java and C++.
Thirdly, screens! I love high res displays, and the more desktop space the better! But one thing that really ticks me off is the fact that the screen on your laptop has a dot pitch of about 0.20, yet professional standalone TFT’s only ever go as low as 0.25 and that you can only find in the 20″ screens. Have you noticed that? I mean how the hell does that make sense? I still have a CRT because I cant even get the 20″ screen I want where I live.
You pretty much have everything I’ve always wanted!

OMG FREAK

^^^^ IM WITH THAT GUY

Where is your 3D works. I’ll inspect your site and nothing, absolutely nothing

I do not produce 3D graphics and animation. Haven’t done so since the 90’s. I have moved onto development since then.

who shot my computers :)~ man if I have this pc’s I will be king

Can we see the guts of a couple of those beasts next time you take them down for maintanince?

Very impressive and I enjoyed the tour, thank you.

Unbelievable… I simply MUST have a setup like it!

Where is your DR site?

VERY impressive office. This is something what I can only dream about, but anyway, I`m happy that someone succeeded to make it real.
Keep up the good job, and make your office even MORE bigger
Best wishes!

I think I love you.

Great job on the FAQ’s Stefan. I’m a advocate of VM’s myself but mainly for learning other OS’s. Congratulations on your success!

Spin

Just checked it out and it looks kinda cool, but I seriously don’t understand the point? What would make you use 7 monitors? I can understand and imagine using 2-3 monitors, but 7? Is it just for personal vanity (seeing how you actually started a website to… show it off?) or do you actually have a need for all of it?

Anyway, it looks rather cool and I’m obviously envious And as long as you’re happy with it, don’t listen to my critique

Why not switch to 19″ chassis? Would all fit in one rack or buy a Blade Center…

Calle & Caleb… check the FAQ page. Already covered.

Stefan,

The pics of your home office are truly awe inspiring. I wish you the best of luck and success.

Too much Windoze, not enough Unix.

Is your lovely partner the Cat or the lady ?

The lady. But the cat gets envy when I say that out loud.

How many trees would you need to plant annually to carbon offset that setup?

Shock…and awe…

can you play pong on that?

wow dude ,
nice setup ya got there
and i thought i was king with my 22″ lcd , 2Tb raid and an amd 5200+ dual core

All this is crap, i have one machine who don`t have monitor and case and it`s strong :D :D
http://www.aureus-rector.net/1/this-is.trance-project.com.jpg

YEAAAAH

ahahahah, man i go to kill my self, cuz i see u`r workstation

Quality.

Do you have any “in use” pictures, or have you declined to publish them due to privacy issues?

Impressive. What I most respect is that your hardware configuration (and purchasing decisions) are dictated by your actual technical needs, not ego. My needs are (currently) less expansive than yours, so I’m looking at putting together a triple-head setup switched for two workstations (a Windows machine and a Mac Pro, the latter primarily for Final Cut Studio) and the rest of the hardware rack-mounted servers hosting virtualized OSes. I also have a less expansive budget, so I will be building my network piecemeal

Thanks for sharing your setup in such detail. It’s given me some good ideas, and helped me identify some flags to keep in mind.

Nice office, but I like the reactions even better. I’ve just read one conversation that amused me very much. It went like this:

“What does he have that for?”
“Like every normal bloke, for porn.”
“Wow, that must be really something when he runs it on all those screens.”

:))

Good day to you,

M.

In a few years, this will be old trash.
Carpe diem

In a few years, all this will have been replaced and upgraded. As it does every year or two

A man’s office is his castle… and what a fine castle Didak has… Kudos!

I would really like to see a video clip of you using 8 monitors. I simple do not believe that you actually can multi-view _that_ good. Seeing is believing

I second the video clip. Not for disbelief though, I think I might learn a few things about using a multi-screen setup. I know my brain would start psychologically blocking off a large portion of them after a few minutes.

Also, congratualations on actually having a use for the multi-machine multi-screen office.

As a multimonitor junkie, I can only say “wow, that’s the way it should be”.
But some questions arise.
First, I was asking why you were using MaxVista and synergy. But, going to MaxVista site, i understand that MaxVista allows you to span windiows over multiple windows machines (which is not my case - but is definitly cool).
Second, I’ve noticed your spaghetti cables, bad boy, but my main issue is : how do you do with video cables ? They’re often too short and very hard to deal with. Have you got some black magic ? Or is the velcro power enough.
Finally, I clearly understand why 19″ racks are not a great solution. But, for dealing with heat and noise, haven’t you ever though about a separate room for you systems, connected to your desktop through cable holes ?

And, as an aside, hiow did you make the wonderful ignyter and ignytion back images ?

@Those who want to see a video: I actually tried that with a webcam positioned at the back of me but the light sensitivity messes it up. The screens and windows wash out to white and you can’t really see much because of that.

@Nicolas: The velcro is very strong, indeed. The overlap where it sticks is about 2″ on average and it holds up bundles of wires, even monitor cables, quite well. I do usually replace monitor cables with different ones that are longer (2m and 3m). The Ignyter images are mathematical visualization of strange attactors, chaos, fractals, etc. combined with a bit of post processing. Moving stuff into a different room and using cable holes is a bit difficult (unless I start moving elsewhere). Rackmount chassis are usually even more noisy too. The cables would also have to be really long. If I move to a place that could better support it, what I would like to do is start a rack in the same room as the office but enclosed within thick glass sliding walls in a way that still allows me easy access while taking out most of the noise, and having some kind of AC system that continually cools the entire walled off enclosure.

Sorry if this has been asked already, what do you think of Vista? Will you be switching your machines to it or no?

That’s not a home office, that’s a home starship bridge. You’ve got more processing power there than the entire Starship Enterprise! Quite obviously, I’m in the wrong line of work. That is one amazing setup!

i bet this system must be great for when watching a movie. Can anyone say ultimate home cinema system?

That is lovely Stefan. I would reduce the amount of screens using 42″ HDTV’s. Would you consider that a good option?

*Bows to god* Bows*

Anyways, I am high school student right now looking into going to nasa, Right now I have a set up like that but with 4 monitors and and 1 laptop and with a similar router set up, much messier cord arrangement. But, what schools would you think would be a good background like yours? I play around with 3d and Autodesk often and have been offered a internship at Hamilton sunstrand, but what would be a good college that nasa 3d engineers would like?

This is great setup, except that you should put less keyboards on the desk and bring your PDA and cell phone forward to where you can reach.

What a beautiful set up! I’m just a hobbyist, so I’m still dreaming of a dual screen system!

I know I have no need for one, but I want one anyway. (don’t think I’m alone)

I looked in your FAQ but didn’t see the make of those blue glowing keyboards. I’ve been looking for a backlit keyboard.

Do you like those?

Nice setup. Very impressive…

Someday….sighs

apristel

I can admire your passion for excellence. I am also afflicted with the “Tool Freak” virus , only my tools work with wood.

Be well.

Wow!! That is an awesome set up you have there!! I thought my home office was pretty amazing but it’ll take me a very long while to catch up with you indeed! - Two questions:

1\ Are you an Evil Genius planning to take over the world?

2\ Is your office based in an extinct volcano / sub-oceanic cave or something?

Certainly looks like it anyway! - Might I suggest the addition of a Pirahna Tank to your office?

With all that processing power is that really a calculator i see on your desk?

@Tom Bird: Evil… maybe. Genius… probably not. If you know of any good vacant extinct volcanos, let me know, I might be in the market for one after thinking it over!

@Steve: Calculator? Uhm… possibly you’re looking at the separate Dinovo numeric keypad, I think. (But I do keep a TI-92 Plus around).

@Matt and MeTheGeek: I hardly ever watch a movie on these screens. Big plasma screens wouldn’t work for me anyway, not enough resolution to move things around on. I’d actually prefer 12 (2 rows, 5 columns) 17″ screens with 1600×1200 if they would make them.

@Billy: The blue backlit keyboards are from some unknown brand called QWare (at least, that’s what it says on the bottom, I picked them up in a store at one point because they were small and didn’t take up much space).

@Troy: Schools… hmm.. You’re asking the wrong person. I’ve never been much in favor of school and much more a proponent of self-study.

Nice setup, I really like it! I thought my world was perfect with just using a desktop with two laptops as supplements. The only thing that would bother me would be the noise. How typically loud is it in your office? I know you said that is louder than most could handle, but do you have anything to compare the loudness against?

Bryan, I’m not sure what to compare the noise with. If you’ve ever been in a datacenter… well, it’s *far* from that bad. Depending on the model of car I’d say, the noise throughout the office is similar to having the AC on on its lowest to second level (and I usually have headphones on when working as well so it really doesn’t bother me as much as it should)

Thanks to an observant reader I just got a few links and information that made me decide to pull the many derogatory comments made by “Xavier Lumine”, who’s real identity is Dmitriy M and certainly isn’t what he claimed to be. This guy had the odacity to troll on the blog calling me a “pathetic grunt” while in other places he attempts to impress people by writing about his claimed $45.000 wrist watch, parties on yachts in Monaco and his Cartiers. And that as a traveler “who has experienced the very utmost of luxury (places like the Mandarin Oriental, private rented castles, Costes, private villas in Florence, etc) in over 40 different countries”. And what ever happened to his illusions of club ownership which he describes elsewhere as “A business partner and I plan to open 5 clubs in Underground, starting with 2 in january 06, 2 in march and 1 in may”? Ah, yes, we know the type, don’t we.

Gosh, all that for a 20-something immature troll. Sorry, Dimitry aka Xavier. This is a place for real people, not your illusions of being a grade a blog-troll. It’s clear who’s pathetic. Keep trolling and I’ll reveal your full name and some more fun details I was sent, which probably will work wonders in search engine results.

You have Croatian anccestors. I’m from Croatia. So you are pretty cool dude.
Your Office is awesome, it could be used by several people, not just you.

I’m curious about what you’ve decided with Vista as well. As a gamer, Vista will be necessary for DX10. However, you lose the support of MaxiVista and other similar programs with WDDM. I assume if you develop with DirectX at all, Vista will be required - have any leads on MaxiVista-like soft that’s going to work with the latest drivers?

((Synergy does function, but spanning is so much easier to work with))

WHY??? and you need this because? nice setup though!

@Andrew: Since many people (who don’t know me or my work) asked that, I created a FAQ.

@Gano and Tek: I don’t have any reason to switch to Vista or deploy it at this time. Too many issues to sort out, too many things that are likely to cause problems, drivers that I hear are often still in beta. Since the office is used for serious work I can’t afford to waste a lot of time battling a new OS. I’ll most likely get a new dedicated system to run Vista when it becomes a priority to use it as a testing target. Right now it appears Visual Studio even has issues when running on Vista, so… I’m just going to sit and wait. My first reactions after playing around with the new UI were “Nice, and it shines too!” but so far that’s really what it has going for it, the new style. The DX10 stuff will become an issue and I suspect Microsoft could have just as easily done DX10 support for XP but for marketing reasons wish to push the market towards Vista and in that case it makes sense (from a corporate perspective) to only have DX10 support in Vista.

Awesome, awesome. I believe it may take quite tremendous discipline to setup and maintain such a set of gear, but I also believe it is absolutely necessary for your work and provide you with incredible amount of productivity boost. For those who are commenting things like “3 screen is absolutely enough”, I feel they are making the same mistake as saying “512KB should be enough for anyone”.

Maybe you should be able to provide a comment telling people how many screens will be “really” beyond human vision can process. My guess is the total screen surface area should reach the same size of your desk.

I’m very, very, VERY Jealous!!!

What a fantastic setup!!
Imagine the audio processing power of a setup like that!!

I’m gonna leave now before I short out my laptop with drool!!

from a very, very jealous electronic musician…

Paul.

Oh no no, elektrovert, don’t be.
Wait, hold on, let me show you my electric bills and cure you of that.

Dude…
Have you tried running Flight Simulator X on those screens?
Do you even game on those sweet machines?
How did you even thought of making it look that sweet?
I used to have a dual screen system, but my eyes were tired looking at both screens.
And the power consumption was poking my head.
How do cope with ALL those screens?

You’re making me cry dude…

Hi Stefan, just like to say AWESOME what a great setup. Your wage packet MUST be FAT no HUGE…

Thanks for letting us see it all.

Envious? Not really - maybe in another lifetime, LOL.

Pete - uk

ps, do some of these people not read your faq? you have a need for this setup, not to brag. Some of these people need to drop their jealousy/envy. This setup is only hardware, and you have rightly pointed out that the software/data is more valuable to you.

Continued success stefan, you deserve it.

pps, will you be setting up a seperate work-station for the fiance, LOL, in pink maybe???

@Hafizan: I hardly play games at all. The last one I played for, oh, perhaps a whole day, was several years ago; Half-Life 2. Oh, and I remember I also bought Oblivion and played that for a few hours. But for entertainment I actually rather not sit at a desk and look at screens. It’s more fun to be able to go out, take the camera with me, and shoot pictures.

@Peter: I’ve noticed most people don’t read the FAQ at all. It was only 9 to 11% of visitors that did. As a test, because marketing people say people are attracted to big buttons with big fonts saying “click here”, I added some “click here” banners to the office page and that saw an increase to 34%. Of course, that does mean that nearly 4 out of 10 visitors get overwhelmed by the visuals, shuts off their perception for a whole 4 minutes, and yields a lot of wild assumptions of what I might or might not be using it for or needing it for. It’s actually quite funny in a “researching human visual perception and behavior” way.

Pink workstations?! Eeek! I doubt that. Sallie is pretty much a laptop user only. Then again, she’s the sane one between the two of us.

Wouldn’t it be easier to use a Linux distribution that allows multiple desktops that you can switch to with the touch of a button instead of setting up all those screens?

Not really. Linux is not really a good idea when 95% of the stuff I develop is for Windows. But more importantly, switching screens on just a single or dual screen would not provide sufficient space (in # of pixels) to put all the windows on that I regularly deal with. The idea of not switching and just throwing some more screens at it is easier.

Wow thats an awesome set up, must be doing some serious work to need all that, let me guess many many virtual machines, only thing my little head can think of to need that power sort of memory. Also havent your eyes been destroyed by many years of staring at a monitor, although see you’ve up-dated to the flat screen, so much easier on the eyes

Ok, no one has asked, so I have to. Everything you mention seems rational, and I completely agree with the arguments that it is a necessity for productivity in (especially) that industry. But why all the USB LEDs? I mean, I know that certain cards have leds on the back, but it’s rare to have white ones, and if they’re USB, then they’re not for cards. What are they for?

I suspect you might be thinking about something entirely different when it comes to USB LED’s. The ones I have stuck into a few empty USB ports are the kind that are meant for laptops, to provide a little light on the keyboard, for when you’re on a plane and don’t want to use the big overhead light for example. There’s a lot of different brands, models, and types. I originally bought a few because they looked useful. Antec makes a few multi-colored ones where you can set the blend of color being emitted from the LED’s.

Since I like to work in the dark as much as possible but still have a bit of backligh I decided to stick a few in the USB hubs which caused some interesting light streaks on the walls with just enough back lighting to offset the intensity and contrast on the screens so I bought a few more and created fancy mood-lighting out of them.

That really rocks! kudos

Wow, just, wow.

I’ve never seen a system setup that impressive before, let alone someone with the skill and requirements to use it all! Personally I find the fact that you NEED a setup like this far more impressive than the physical layout and specs. Of course the fact you probably have the disk space to store the entire Library of Congress and the processing power exceeding some supercomputers is impressive as well.

So, the question is, are you some kind of transhuman computer ubermensch? Or just a guy with a lot of time and experiance? I mean I find dual-monitors disorienting enough, let alone that bank…

Also, if you wouldn’t mind, would you have any advice for a young computer science major on how to end up with a setup like this someday?

Dan, I don’t think I’m transhuman. I don’t have a lot of time, which is why I want to work efficiently in a way that works for me. Experience… well, you might be onto something there, I’ve only been doing this “computer thing” for 26 years.

Advice.. hmm.. let’s see.. keep clients happy, do good work, make decent money, have a good accountant, don’t go in debt for anything, only buy what you need when you need it or just before you need it, and find a home with a good electric system or have one put in because you’re going to need that.

Your office setup is just totally amazing. I wish it were mine Hope the program design is going good!

Cheers!
Travis

Wow, that is a lot of stuff
My computer is a p.o.s

How much memory do you have all together?

This is just the setup I need, in order to play Second Life…

Stefan, I’m a bit of a neo-ludite and most of the pictures just strike me as cool shiny metal shots, so I must say I got more impressed with the person behind it all. I’m glad there’s someone like you in the cyberspace to set a good example for computer workers.

P.s: I can’t believe how old I sound. I’m only 24.

Wow! Totally impressive! You must do great work with a set-up like that!:)

What do you do with the hardware when it gets replaced? sell it?

Matt, I usually give away the systems to friends or acquaintances that know someone who could use one (provided of course they don’t mind large cases and big power supplies). After a maximum of 3 years any hardware is a tax write-off anyway.

I work in a gov’t facility with about 3000 square feet of computer floor space. And you nearly put us to shame!

I was looking through the pictures of your home office and noticed that you had trouble setting the time on your VCR (out dated technology, no DVD burner?) If you would like me come by and help you set it I would be more than happy? I was also wondering why an Author-izer would wear a white doctor’s coat, role play?

I would love to know where I could get a copy of the twilight forest wallpaper on the two front systems in your 1st shot.

Any help?

regards

Chris: Yes, outdated technology indeed. I’ve stopped watching TV a few years ago. There’s never anything of interest on there anyway. Though if I am in the mood of being lied to I’ll sometimes turn on CNN. And yes, role play… as the image label says; “This image was shot at the Linnen Life Gallery after Sallie gave a presentation on podcasting, in character with the white doctor’s coat and as professor at the Podcast Asylum.”

Warner: The forest wallpaper came from 9X Media.

Loved your setup! Will you marry me?

I have to say that this is a very impresive setup. Needless to say that if you need this kind of ‘PC’ then more power to you, sir. You obviously enjoy what you do and need a have a productive place to work in, way beyond my means and requirements but boy, am I jealous, lol! Thankyou for sharing just a small insight into your world.

Just a couple quick questions:

1) Is the desk bought or did you make it yourself?
2) About how big is the room that all this is in?

I like the rest are in total geek awe and envy mode (and planning ahead now for when the lotto cooperates and I can have a room just like it haha).

Dear Stefan, here is my desktop/server multi OS into a Heineken Box
http://www.nnlnews.com/pics/3.jpg
http://www.nnlnews.com/pics/2.jpg
http://www.nnlnews.com/pics/1.jpg

best regards, from Argentina.

So…how much of a pain was this in the days before LCD flatpanels?

@Pete: A lot hotter and heavier.

Hey Man…cool set up.
You must be really dedicated to do all this stuff and must really have a passion for it.
I’m wondering, what do you reckon you’d have to do to be able to keep the room livable on a hot day…maybe a few freezers or something lol. Also…one question…how come you don’t have a Wiki about you?

@Jerram: On really hot days I am usually out, not working, or take the laptop to a cooler place. There’s only so much cooling I can do on the office side that it’s more practical to take a few months vacation.

A wiki… hmm… good question, I don’t know. I think, given that there’s a few folks out there who already think it’s pretentious to show my home office pictures, that having a Wiki might get them to claim “uber-pretentious”. Hehe.

I have 5 identical 19″ LCD screens on my XP machine and lots of people tell me that I’m crazy and that I don’t need them. It’s nice knowing that other people are doing it to. I totally agree with you - I do use them all, they do make working more efficient, and if I had more than 5 then I’d make use them too. Yes I do have Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator running at the same time as e-mail, 30 Internet Explorer windows and various other things. Ultramon is a utility that can’t be overestimated for multimonitor setups. I dont’ really understand how people can say that its overkill - Windows is a multitasking OS, and that’s what we all do with it. I chose 5 as it’s a balanced number - I started out with one, moved to two, and then to three, having a focal point in the middle was great. Then when I moved from CRTs to LCDs the logical progression was another on each side, in an arc, with a focal monitor in the centre. I could go 7 but i don’t have the desk space!

@Andrew: You’re absolutely right. Productivity goes up, efficiency increases, but I suspect that the many people who don’t understand that or claim, mostly out of simply not having had the experience of using multiple screens, are perhaps people who might not be able to deal with it. There are people that can listen to music while reading a book and others who can’t. If I watch a surgeon doing a complex procedure while using many tools that are completely unknown to me it may seem like magic but I wouldn’t dare try and tell the surgeon he doesn’t need all those tools or that he doesn’t need them all. Not unless I was a surgeon with the same seniority and experience.

It’s like a driver of an ordinary car saying to the trucking company they don’t need all those trucks to transport stuff because “the trunk of an ordinary car can also hold stuff for transport”.

So…did your fiancee write all this or did you?

I did, and do. If Sallie did it, it would be much better.

It’s a bit bigger then my system and I’m going to go ahead and thank you for that link to the synergy program, you just made my life a lot easier.

Yeah, your’s is a lot bigger than mine. I’ve only got 3 CRT, 2 Pcs and 1 laptop.

But, thanks a lot for the synergy! Now… my center screen and center keyboard, works with the Vista PC and Mac OSX on the right.

Thanks a lot, and VERY NICE office.

Hi Stephan, I think that your home office is absolutely excellent and your work (from your explanation) is very intriguing. I dealt with negative people like you talk about when a buddy of mine and I started our company, American Legacy Real Estate. People said that I would not be able to make the site work and that people would not like it. We knew that they were wrong and forged on. We have been extremely successful and are now preparing to offer national franchises this year at NAR (The National Association of Realtors) in Las Vegas. People said bad things about my home office too because I had a $7000.00 Pioneer 50″ plasma as my personal display. They told me that they would not have thrown the money away; bla bla bla. As you stated, they had no idea of what I even did for a living. Don’t mind jealous people. They are just negative by nature. Keep up the wonderful work and thanks for sharing photos of your home office. I absolutely love it!

Leo McKenzie, III
VP, American Legacy Real Estate, LLC
Owner, Solo Computer Services.com

http://www.alre-blueridge.com
http://www.solocomputerservices.com

When working on a streaming audio server once I found my self opening many terminal windows and using multiple machines and displays as a natural side effect. In comparison to systems with fewer screens I found the tear down and respawning of applications, and reframing my mind around everything to be a big obstacle. So what a great convenience this type of setup really is.

Stefan perhaps you could add a section or just comment here about some of the work scenarios that you deal with in some further detail. I can see how starting a few different programs in various virtual servers, then having them interact with each other becomes far simpler to see output of each one at a glance. With fewer screens the alternative might be to architect the code at yet a higher level of abstraction, which is perhaps too difficult or at least perceived to be too difficult or not possible due to the way the clients you work for are managed or their teams currently operate.

I’ve always wondered what the ideal programming environment would be. Whether for emacs based work, or visual studio, etc, and what constitutes the necessary items for productive work in terms of screens, keyboard position, desk space, lighting, and so on. http://www.winsted.com/ makes some impressive furniture however most of it is geared towards simply monitoring and I’m not sure which items of theirs would be best suited for a programming environment. As you demonstrate with your set up, the ideal work space is perhaps a case by case basis. There may be a minimum that can be somewhat agreed upon though, and improved on over time. Some of the multi monitor gallery images were helpful in this regard though I found your set up to be the most well thought out.

Aside from the 12-screen variation you may consider for the future, for example based on four quad based ergotron units, and the neverending storage and system upgrade tasks are there other changes you’re looking forward to? That glass-based 19″ rack with ventilation sounds interesting, and another possibility might be to have a fake wall which was sort of hinted at here in the comment blog; most of the systems are placed exactly on the other side of the wall, with 1″ gromet holes and other face plates as shown at datapro.net on the work side. And yet another option is to use that wall, again just behind the screens, with a large rear based projection unit visible just above. So all the systems, noise, and projector would actually be completely behind that wall. It would be the service area, so to speak.

I actually remember some of those early plugin modules for 3D Studio and the particle systems and features offered by them. Its very cool that you’ve gone so far with the technology and software development. At the time I managed to read/write some data into 3D Studio by using the 3ds file format specs that were published, only enough to place and move some objects.

My last question if you’re able to comment on it is whether you can see a scenario where you can be even more productive, perhaps by doing work without the overhead of all those virtual servers; I realize you need to test the correctness of the final product on an end system, and a virtual server has the nice side effect that you won’t have a specific scsi or other failure mode tied to your build, model and physical instance of machine too. Perhaps it also serves to nicely save your last work state, as I alluded to above with the terminal window example.

@LV: I hadn’t heard of Winsted before but some of their multimedia desks look pretty decent. Though I think I’d need two or three of those in some connected arrangement. I’ll add something to the FAQ about typical screen/system usage scenarios that I find myself in. That is actually a darn good idea!

Improving my efficiency has been, and still is, focussed on increasing the level of automation involved. For years it has been a hodgepodge of scripts and remote triggers and command tunnels to other systems and the VM’s and in the past year I’ve started replacing that with proprietary software in order to give me more control over all processes and by having simple configurations that will take care of a lot of things that are often done manually or by slower scripts and batches. This is mostly in the area of automating more of the API documentation and source code/build management, extracting and combining source and documentation, and of course starting off more automated tests and unit tests and continuous integration. Throwing more hardware and power at it, at this point, won’t really help all that much so the solution is now to improve the software and processes that form the actual backbone of all development.

Thanks for sharing! Your site saved me a lot of research and gave me some ideas that I would not have otherwise considered. A few others that may be worth linking for your visitors:

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/javaben/archive/2005/09/my_ultimate_hom.html - A $1,400 chair for the long coding days

http://cnet.nytimes.com/4520-10737_1-6424452-1.html?tag=smgif - Gamers or students may like this 3-monitor setup

Cord management ideas:
http://lifehacker.com/software/workspaces/hack-attack-the-cordless-workspace-sort-of-179911.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/diy/diy-underdesk-gadget-mount-237789.php

Stefan,
Outstanding setup. I have progressed from a single monitor to two, and then three, and currently use five, plus two laptops. To the people who have never used multiple monitors, I can understand their negative comments about the need for something like this, but I couldn’t agree with you more on the benefits of having all of the programs you need, up and available, without having to minimize one in order to open another. Granted, it’s certainly not a necessity for the majority of computer users who are just surfing or e-mailing, but when you need to use several programs at the same time, it’s invaluable as you obviously know. So, to those of you who don’t understand the purpose for such an “over the top” sort of setup, it’s just that what most people use their computers for really doesn’t require more than a single display, which is the norm. Sure, this looks cool and has an obvious “wow” factor, but specialized work requires specialized tools and, in reality, that’s what this is. Thanks for sharing you photos.
Dennis

i was doing a random search on google for desktop background images and i accidentally found your website. i think your system is so sweet im trying to make a similar setup using old school computers i got off one of my teachers. while doing this i have managed to setup the computers with synergy but i was wondering if there is any way to make it so that one set of mouse and keyboard control all the computers but you can still drag windows across all the screens, i.e. if i wanted to run windows internet exlorer and found i wanted it on a differnt screen i could just drag it out of the screen and onto one of the other computers but still have the process running on the computer it was opened on. i have tried to search for something like this but have been unable to find something like it. do know of any program that could work like this?(or does yours?)
thanks in advance.

Rob

This, Apple’s Web site 9specifically the Displays page that describes the 30 inch Apple Cinema HD Display) and the many dual-monitor setups run by Macs that I’ve seen pics of inspired me to buy a second monitor.

When I went to the Apple store and saw a 3o inch Apple Cinema Display, I was wowed. I wonder wha would happen if I stepped foot in your office!

Hey there. I’m very impressed with what you’ve got there. It has inspired me with ideas for my future setup. Also, I’m not sure how many times you’ve heard this, but, there is a program call Synergy which lets you control any machine you want on your network with one mouse and keyboard. Just thought it might prove useful to you Also, I’m loving the monitors and that 32GB ECC Server of yours. I kind of sat here with my mouth open when I read that little bit. Simply amazing.

KORHAL

You mentioned that you have headphones on most of the time, what kind of headphones do you have?

I normally get a new pair once or twice a year, right now I’m using a Sony MDR V-300. Not too big and heavy, not too expensive but with decent sound quality. I prefer light and small and with acceptable bass but that’s a combination that is hard to find.

As a fellow software developer / entrepreneur I must say I envy your setup. I have a fairly new company that is growing very fast, one day hope to have a similar setup. I agree with productivity of multi-monitors as well. It amazes me how many people think I’m crazy for just my three monitors (planning to add more soon). I appreciate you taking the time to publish your photos and personal incite; it was very entertaining and captivating.

P.S. Your server names are quite clever!

Great set-up!
I’m very impressed by the way you manage all the windows, I tried Maxivista after reading what you said about it and I’m conviced since. I also discovered Powerpro in your FAQ, but I can’t find how you can “launch applications or launch them on any system from any other system” with it. Do you use a specific plugin? I’ve been playing with it for some days now but it’s still a bit confusing to me

@Damien: The launching of applications on remote systems that I perform using PowerPro are actually done through a few custom Windows Services I wrote that act as tunnels or command gateways over the LAN. The PowerPro controls basically launch a local command against a local service which then instructs the remote system. The only purpose of PowerPro is that I have all frequently used commands under a panel instead of having to issue them through the shell like remCmd.exe /target:Octane /cmd:”start VS2005Env”.

hey, great setup! Those chieftec cases are also my preference for workstation/server cases, theyre built really well with good airflow. The huge one looks great too! might b a bit hard to carry though. I’m also waiting for lcd screens to become 1600×1200 for 17″ which would finally be the same as a 19″ crt’s res and screenspace! for the now the 30″ by apple seems to offer a great res. Have you considered getting a few of those? I guess it may not be practical based on the graphic card setup but they would give you great resolution.

Bill Gates was quoted saying that more than one screen leads to greater productivity, a nice quote to tell anyone who is constantly wondering hehe. Your setup, being pictured in the dark definitely reminds me of swordfish! maybe more processing power though!

You were saying that it gets pretty hot - i can imagine, do u not hav the a/c on in the summer tho? thats the best thing about datacenters you can sit under a giant a/c tho ull need good headphones on!

When you press “print screen”, what do you see in the formed image?
just one monitor, or all of them???

Thanks Stefan, I guess I’ll be looking for an other way to launch my program remotly, Since I have no programming skills ^^

@Damien: check out PsExec by Sysinternals (now Microsoft). It might be a solution for you, if it’s only the launching of apps and processes that’s needed.

Dang… That’s just awesome!!!

Divno!Predivno!No comment….nice!I want that,too.

Do the sides of the lcd’s ever get annoying when using a program over multiple screens???
Would it work with projectors instead of lcd’s and would it be better???

The edges don’t really bother me. Before the TFT’s I had multiple CRT’s and the edges on those were much wider. Projectors wouldn’t work at all, though. Resolution too low, requires a larger area to project on, bad color rendition, often fuzzy up close. Different purpose really.

Stefan, do you program anything at all?
Like PHP, C/C++, Visual Basic, ASM?
You could really do alot with thoes machines, and I havn’t looked, but have you ever considered getting supercomputers?
I’m not sure if you have supercomputers already, heh.

Thanks,
Nitrogen.

I’ll volunteer my time to test out how that system works for gaming.
PS: I’ll bring cookies.

Nice setup. Where did you get that foam wallpaper?

Hello Stefan. You have mentioned something about every system you have, except RADON. What do you run on it?

Radon is mostly a chameleon that I use for testing. The OS differs from time to time and often the graphics card does as well (testing for differences between ATI/nVidia and OpenGL/DirectX). I either swap out four of its HD’s with a pre-installed environment or I restore a large image of a pre-installed environment to the system.

Sweet setup. Just to differ from all the tech questions here - I’d like to know where I can buy faux brick wallpaper like the stuff you have hanging in your office. I’m renovating and would like a similar look to what you have.

I live in New Zealand - do you know of any online sellers that carry faux brick like yours?

thanks for the synergy link and maxi vista

i was having trouble to transfer data or workresult from my development laptop which use linux and my laptop server that use XP that connect to my external storage.

i used to use USB to transfer data but thanks to you.. i can

well i don’t use ethernet.. i use wi-fi instead.. less cable:) (of course i only tranfer small amount of bytes )

Hello Stefan,

Aaaaah…. 3D Studio in the days… that’s when my fascination for graphics all started… and monitors :). I have several 3DS IPAS books, but can’t find your name among them. A shame.

The hardware is without words ! But the absolute best thing that seperates you ahead of all the others I’ve seen, are the 2 front panels placed in an angle ….. brilliant !! It breaths 1 word : “Control !” But that’s just me, of course.

Are the wallpapers that you use custom made or copyrighted? Would be superb to have them too

I don’t want to considered a spammer on your site, so if you think the next link isn’t appopriate, please feel free to delete it :). It’ll be posted on http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon soon. What you see are 9 out of 30 monitors.

http://users.telenet.be/desinerixu/DSC02433.jpg

.. and that’s only for playing World of Warcraft. 1 advice Stefan : never play it !

It was a joy to go through your entire website. Awesome !!

Quite an impressive setup, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that your system gives you more pleasure than any game could ever. Live and let live, you out of all people should know that.

Anyway. Keep up.

Great system you have there!

I noticed that you have a sound mixer. I have 3 computers at home and only a pair of speakers. I have been looking on the Internet for a way to get all my computers to output their sound through that one pair of speakers, at the same time, so no matter which computer or computers are on they will use the same pair of speakers, and without using a ’switching’ box.

It seems to me that you accomplished this with a mixer.

Would please make a short comment on this?

Many thanks in advanced.

MINDBLOWING!

Nice system, and I liked the way you talk of yourself.
Stefan have you ever considered of building a small SAN in your little network?
The only think i personally don’t like is the networking part, how do you manage redundancy expecially in the switching part?