My humble experience is that gadgets are ultimately counter-productive, and a distraction.

In a previous life I've blown painful amounts of money on music equipment, only to realize that I might have been a decent guitar player if I had just stuck to playing guitar instead of tweaking multitrack digital audio editing equipment with virtual racks of multiband compressors and whiz-bang effects. Same goes for programming, at least in my case.

What I really want is more time.

I disagree with the "Impressive" adjective. It is more like cluttered workspaces where sunlight never hit there.

For me, uncluttered workspace is really awesome and it enables me for uncluttered thinking.

I just like mine most than ever... I have a huge clean space in my desk, where my 26'' LCD screen and ergonomic keyboard and mouse are resting at the background, and I bring them forward only when it be absolutely needed (to plug my laptop and get computer work done).

Usually, I enjoy to have a lot of clean place to make my paperwork and thats why I keep everything else (2 laptops, and a lot of gadgets) inside bureau drawers unless I need them for something particular.

I'm curious, what exactly is impressive about the "first place" workspace?

I kinda had that feeling looking through just about all of them.

I'd prefer working in the first place workspace to most of the others, but I agree that the gadgetry is not particularly impressive.

Come to think of it, that's probably why I prefer it.

Also, the second place.

Oh, eh, no?

There are a few very nice ones in there, but aren't we over the phase where OMG OMG OMG more than one monitor - and not much else, it seems - is impressive?

http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078... this one is pretty sweet :D

and this one is just hilarious http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...

Interesting that all of these workspaces were basically decorated caves -- unless I missed one or two.

I've set up a "nest" in a lot of different places. What I'd like is a huge window overlooking something worth viewing everyday, like the mountains or the beach. Something light and open with lots of walking around room, not something that looks like the crypto shack on a nuclear submarine.

To each his own, though.

I worked in a building with huge picture windows looking out onto a beach, for a year. I can confirm subjective productivity and relaxation benefits compared to sitting in a windowless room.

I sometimes take my laptop outside to a coffee shop with outside seatings and wifi. Even though I can't do "heavylifting" that I do at home with three displays, the creative stuff is really easy to generate when windowless and wallless :)

Referring to this (http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...) I've seen more of these vertical screens recently, (and not so recently: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICL_PERQ_1_workstatio...) but I was wondering if they're useful for coding? I'd assume so since you'd be able to view more lines and not white space (unless you're in an IDE) but I'm still a little unsure.

they aren't dedicated vertical screens, they rotate.

The workspaces in that list aren't very impressive at all.

Here's a more comprehensive list of artist's, blogger's and programmer's workspaces: http://parkablogs.com/content/creative-workspaces-and-home-o... some of the link will take you to huge flickr pools.

The artist's workspaces are way more interesting.

My workspace last year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rend/2381390598/

Now I prefer to head off to some wooded area with Mac Book Pro unibody + mobile wifi hotspot setup in my FJ Cruiser.

The most impressive workspace is the one just near the beach, not the one with 100 monitors :)

I somehow end up thinking if I ever get to see so many workplaces in RL!

Posers. Here's a workspace where actual work gets done: http://www.flickr.com/photos/msisk/3444885394/sizes/l/

;)

Hmm, I don't know if I'd qualify most of these as "OCD" peoples workspaces honestly.

The majority are pretty cluttered.

this one has something charming : http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...

(no sarcasm)