The Answer to Life's Problems....Add A Monitor

I love monitors, some more than others. One of my favorites is the Sony SDM-N50. I've coveted this sleek little LCD monitor for years. How many years? 13! That's right, it's not a typo. It was introduced in the year 2000. It cost $1499. That is also not a typo. I remember it very clearly. I was working in IT at the time and I wanted to order LCD monitors in the worse way for some of our facilities, but they were simply too expensive. However at the end of the fiscal year there was some extra money and "the big boss" asked me to come up with a rationale as to way we needed to buy them. So, I spent all of one day researching them, reading every "while paper" I could lay my hands on, until I finally came up with a piece of comprehensive research done by the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power. What they found was that LCD's lasted 2 to 3 times as long as standard CRTs in normal use, and consumed 20% or less power. After reading the synopsis of that, he told me that I could have $1500, and I could buy as many as I could fit into that amount. My supplier (CDWG) got me great prices for a few leftovers they had and I was able to get 3; 1 IBM and 2 Viewsonics. We used them at our front desks and I remember that all the "powers that be" were very pleased with them. 

However, the one I really wanted was this Sony. It wasn't just any Sony either, it was the most expensive one at the time. I remember that you would see them on all the network news shows, since (as you can see), it was not only an LCD, but the only one where the back look as nice as the front! It also was unique in that it only needed one thin cable with a micro connector for both power and signal. Plus there were stereo speakers in the base as well! 

The trick was that Sony moved the bulk of the electronics into a separate box that also included the power supply, AND 2 inputs too! Then you could tuck that box away somewhere out of sight.

When you look at how thin this thing is, it's really pretty amazing for something that old....and not bad for $20. Yup, found it in a pawn shop in a neighboring little town. I've been patiently watching this for nearly a year, waiting for the price to drop from $75 to $50 and then finally to $20. You might ask yourself; why would this "high end" monitor sell for $20!?! Well, because we live in the land of super-size-it. We always went bigger (not necessarily better), so old and small monitors are generally worthless. That same pawn shop has had a Dell 2007wfp IPS monitor sitting for over a year as well. 

No....I'm not trying to do this in my little office area. Then, what do I need another monitor for? Here's my situation: I've been using a 19" Westinghouse LCD TV/monitor as the 3rd screen for the Blackbird workstation through a switcher. That was fine as long as I was OK with not having somewhere to display the file server, but I'd prefer to be able to control it directly. The other option was connect the server, but have no input for the various PCs that I'm working on for people. So I had three devices with two inputs. The solution turned out to be adding one very small, very thin, $1500 monitor bought at a $1480 discount.