I found the 5 monitor setup is interesting. Some of our ops (!= programmer) people have multiple (>2 monitors) but I have found there's no much point going beyond 3, tops 4 because then you start losing sight of important things happening in them. In my experience it is much better to optimise the real estate on 2 widescreen or 3 regular monitors.
I like my office a lot, with two full walls of windows. I have enough room for two desks, 5 monitors, and a couch/coffee table for sitting and thinking. I use 3 monitors for my main computer, and I find that it's the perfect amount of real estate.
I'm glad to see everybody seems to have 2+ widescreen monitors. Where I work, an amazing number of people work off a single laptop-sized screen all day. I don't understand how they can do it; it makes me wonder if I'm some kind of programmer-'tard who needs special equipment to function. Good to get some affirmation to the contrary.
The equipment is not so important. I have written some great applications hunched over my 9" eeepc. Generally, I use a 24" monitor and happy hacking keyboard, though; which definitely makes things easier. (It also makes it easier to get distracted by HN, though.)
I spent a while coding on a 15" Lenovo laptop and it works because the resolution is 1920 x 1200. I still like to use multiple monitors but it's not really necessary.
Worst coding environment was probably one of those CRT iMac's running OS 8.
I sit in front of my 24" monitor when working in the Flash IDE, Illustrator or PhotoShop; otherwise I prefer working directly on my laptop. I generally just keep an instance of MacVim, a terminal and a browser open; I find myself staying more focused this way -- albeit I miss having a source of reference open next to the editor at times.
How can anyone stand those nasty apple keyboards. Apple makes wonderful computers but their keyboards and mice are some of the worst I have ever had the displesure of using.
I haven't yet switched to multiple monitors. My laptop and I have been through so much coding together, it might just feel like cheating to start using my desktop.
I have those for long term notes (notes from a meeting for example), but if a customer calls and I need to jot down a phone number or something really quick, having a whiteboard desktop is great.
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The more ambitious folks record time-lapses of themselves (and their monitors).
But hey, we're all different.
Worst coding environment was probably one of those CRT iMac's running OS 8.
Most notably - http://www.deskography.org/media/desks/images/brian_desk_jpg...
On an Amazon Door Desk I built myself, with whiteboard glued on the top for quick note jotting.