Multiple monitors suck your productivity away
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There is a huge disconnect between the article and your headline. The article asserts people cannot multitask very efficiently and therefore lose productivity, which is true to a large degree. However, what you implied with your post is that multiple monitors decrease productivity, which is entirely different thing and is patently false. There are numerous situation where using multiple monitors to do a single task can vastly improve productivity. For example you completely ignored Trollslayer comment about spanning VS on two monitors, which is exactly what many people including myself do. My main monitor is all code all the time, my right monitor has various supplementary windows depending if I'm coding or debugging. If I'm coding it's solution explorer, properties, output, error list, task list, find results, find symbol results windows, if I'm debugging it's various watch windows to monitor variables, call stack and output windows mainly. This layout lets me view a lot more code at once while still being able to quickly browse solution, properties, and see variable state, it saves me time having to constantly juggle a bunch of windows I need on a single monitor. Heck, sometimes I wish I had 3 monitors, because I need to google/read example as I code and switching windows is a pane, or what if I need to watch SQL profiler as I execute code? Once again, two monitors are invaluable in this situation, 3 would be even better. Hate to say it because I have an impression that you're a very knowledgeable person, but in this case, you're dead wrong. Not only you're wrong, but you're trying to justify your position using irrelevant examples as is with this article. The article is about multitasking, not using multiple monitors for one task.
I echo a lot of your ideas. My main monitor is also code all the time (although occasionally some non-programming windows will be on this monitor). My right monitor has Breakpoints, Class View, Error List, Find and Replace, Find Results 1, Find Symbol Results, Output, Properties, and Solution Explorer when I'm not debugging. When I am debugging, my right monitor contains Call Stack, Locals, and Watch, among other things. The windows XP taskbar on my machine is on the far right and is at the minimum visible width. I strongly believe my work day is more productive than if were using only 1 monitor.
Regards, Mike