Dual Monitor on a Mac mini or any Mac is the way to go!

I own a PowerMac G4 MDD and also my current machine is a Mac mini i5 dual core 2.5 Ghz w/ hyper threading (== 4 virtual cores!) and i alway do a dual monitor setup.

I will be talking about dual monitor setup on an intel Mac mini w/ display port or thunderbolt port.

It has increased productivity for me.  I have one monitor running JGrasp, when i am coding and another monitor running Safari or Pages or LibreOffice and this dual monitor setup is great!

From what i recall, intel Mac minis support 2 monitors and mines support 3 monitors (my model is the one with discrete AMD Radeon GPU) and the setup is easy and instantanous. The Mac mini comes with a hdmi to dvi cable, so that is the setup for monitor #1, so you then buy a display port/thunderbolt to dvi (female plug) adapter and buy an extra dvi cable (male to male) and then plug it in and it will auto detect and you are set.  The adapter costs about $6.99 on Amazon.com and the dvi cables cost about $5.75.

I recommend these dvi cables(male to male) :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045JNA18/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and I also recommend this display port/thunderbolt to dvi adapter(female plug):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003BHHIA4/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

******DON'T BUY A DISPLAY PORT/THUNDERBOLT TO DVI WITH THE DVI CABLE BUILT IN ON ONE END AND THE DISPLAY PORT/THUNDERBOLT CONNECTOR ON THE OTHER END-- THOSE ARE PROBLEMATIC AND FLAKEY AND UNRELIABLE.

JUST GET A SEPARATE DISPLAY PORT/THUNDERBOLT TO DVI ADAPTER(FEMALE PLUG) & A SEPARATE DVI CABLE (MALE TO MALE) BECAUSE THIS WILL BE MORE RELIABLE-- LIKE THE ONES I RECOMMENDED WITH LINKS TO THE PRODUCTS ON AMAZON********

Next launch up System preferences and click Display and click Arrange and drag the menubar to the monitor you wish to make your main monitor.  Each monitor can have its own wallpaper/desktop picture.  and I recommend a free program called SecondBar, which adds a menubar to the second monitor.

Secondbar can be downloaded at Macupdate.com-- here's the link:

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33264/secondbar