The Industrial Desktop

Andrew Vallis has a dual-monitor setup at home that he has tweaked to match his need. With just a little work, he has two displays that both give him access to his most commonly used files and applications, useful data, his RSS feeds and more. Here’s how he set it all up.

Andrew explains some of the inspirations for his desktop over at his Kinja blog, including credits to Dan Carr’s desktop, which we featured a few weeks ago. You can see his right-most monitor in the image above — the left display is down below. If you want the same look, you won’t need to work too hard to get it. Here’s what you’ll need to build it yourself.

• The wallpaper from DeviantArt user Sanfranguy.
• The Rainmeter system tweaking and monitoring tool for Windows
• The Gnometer theme for Rainmeter for the top bar and icons on the right monitor (above)
• The PlaySuite theme for Rainmeter for the photo, music and video library icons in the centre of the right monitor (above)
• The Memento theme for Rainmeter for the sidebar on the left monitor (below) that includes new email, weather, notes, login/logout/restart controls and system monitors
• The Elegence 2 theme for Rainmeter for the time/date display in the centre of the left monitor (below)
• The XWidget customisation platform for Windows
• A customized version of the Blue RSS Widget for the feed displays at the bottom of the scren (inspired by Dan Carr’s tweaked version)
• The RocketDock application launcher for the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube quick-icons on the right side of the right display (above).
• The Socialis icons for the RocketDock sidebar

Here’s the left display in action, sporting the dual-desktop wallpaper which spans both displays:

It looks like a lot of components, but that’s just because Andrew has both displays customised to suit the way he uses each one. If you like what you see here, head on over to his Kinja blog to let him know you dig what he’s done, and of course to ask any questions if you can’t get things looking quite right.

Functional Dual Monitor Desktop [Andrew Vallis]