Since the advent of 16:10/16:12 monitors I've pretty much done the 3 monitor thing. One in landscape, and two in portrait. The two vertical ones get dedicated as an emacs monitor, and the second as a "docs" and status monitor. Usually running acrobat or a single browser window with an audio, or system status window pinned on top in an unobtrusive location. The single landscape monitor gets pretty much everything else, email, chat apps, xterms, etc, etc.
Once in a while, the docs monitor will get replaced with a giant log/debug window, but that is pretty rare.
So, I guess its a bit odd, but recently I started mapping the emacs and acroread with dedicated monitors to a hotkey so I can immediately switch back to them without the alt-tab cycling. So I have a really hard time understanding people with tiling window managers, or running on single screens. That might be the problem with the setup, because trying to use a laptop in a coffee shop is mostly impossible.
Once in a while, the docs monitor will get replaced with a giant log/debug window, but that is pretty rare.
So, I guess its a bit odd, but recently I started mapping the emacs and acroread with dedicated monitors to a hotkey so I can immediately switch back to them without the alt-tab cycling. So I have a really hard time understanding people with tiling window managers, or running on single screens. That might be the problem with the setup, because trying to use a laptop in a coffee shop is mostly impossible.