Dual Screen or Big Single Screen

Ok Question for you guys...

I'm sorry if you have answered similar questions before but I would really appreciate it if you could help me out:
Do I get two of these monitors Hanns.G HW173DB (17inch 1440x900)

or one of these:
LG M228WA

The later is much more versatile but I fear it would be too big, and it is extremely unlikely that I would use it so much as a multimedia screen, as I have my PC linked to it and I would find it awkward attaching the console or tv to it, as no matter what room I am in the monitor is always on my desk and the tv socket is always somewhere else...

Anywho I do tend to mess around with a lot of things at once. How well do dual screens integrate with XP, can you assign programs to open up on one screen, and what happens when you are gaming, and it goes to full screen, which one is it shown on?

Would this mean that I can be playing a game whilst MSN or something else is on the other screen, and i can type and play seamlessly?

Currently I use a Viewsonic 19inch (1440*900) I like the resolution as it is sensible and means I don't need an uber powerful graphics card to keep things running smoothly.

Help would be much appreciated

Cheers

Ian

yes xp remembers which screen you last closed the program on and next time you open it, the program will open on that screen.

seamlessly yes but you have to have quite a powerful pc my desktop can easily swap between an open game and msn by pressing alt-tab my laptop can't though the game or the laptop freezes.

I would reccomend third-party software to manage your screens I use ultra-mon it is very versatile and creates a life saving taskbar on the extra screens so that you don't have to make your usual windows taskbar huge and only on one screen

I have my Dual 2001FP hooked up to 2 computers (DVI/D-Sub switching)

It is quite unpractical to run game AND msn on the same computer. By the time you switched to desktop it would be like 20 seconds before you can send a message, then another 20 seconds to go back to the game.

I just play on one screen and use ANOTHER computer for chatting and browsing. In case of Supreme Commander, I have my 2nd monitor switch to another computer for messages, while still playing on the 1st monitor, and no effect on my game play.

Dual monitor (+Dual Computer) is very flexible for work. I would say 2x17~19" will be great for working on 2 full screen application. I use 2x20 inch and that gives me 4 pages of MS word document at 95%.

Because I don't "multitask" that way I only need 1GB of ram on each of my machine.

Regarding HannsG ...theres the Hanns G HW191D 19"incher ...incase you didn't know... http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/_950/mayi.gif
....quite well rated ...pretty cheap - (so not without its little niggles occasionally) ....btw I heard the response time is apparently 5ms and not the 8ms as stated on Amazon.