Interestingly enough, I get this same feeling of being constrained while being tethered to a desk. I love the ability to move to the kitchen, or the couch, or outside. I've tried using external monitors before and I'm so used to virtual desktops that I often forget they're even there. To each their own, I guess.

Yep this is me. I need to be able to roam around my office and even just sit in different postures (standing, couch, leaning back in office char, on high top stool) to keep me from getting restless.

Your eyes can only look at one screen at once. I find that a laptop + some key commands to switch between applications and windows of the same application is roughly equivalent to multiple monitors and just leaving everything open.

When I’m doing web development, I usually have both the web page up and the IDE with back end API. When the API end point is hit, it breaks in the IDE. That doesn’t even include database clients, looking at things in the AWS console etc.

> I feel way too constrained doing a lot of work without at least two external monitors. Preferably three.

I use my personal computer for things other than work. I don't need 27 inches to read my email or post on Hacker News.

For that I have an iPad. I tried to get away with the 2n1 but I really prefer a 4:3 screen for pure consumption than 16:9.

Besides, my iPad has a cellular modem, is lighter, has better battery life and “unlimited” LTE data.