You probably won't be surprised that I've recently made some changes in the monitor setup on my desk. Some of it has to do with the change in hardware resulting from the removal of a computer. Basically, "Mission Control" as my wife likes to call it, at one point was holding displays connected to 3 and sometimes 4 computers. One was of course my main workstation (the Blackbird), another was a box that ran Windows XP with a load that replicated what some of my clients ran, plus my wife's embroidery software, and of course, my Windows Home Server machine. All of the monitors could be switch between the Blackbird and their secondary usage (eg. server, XP box). This gave me 3 monitors to use on a day-to-day basis. Three is good. Given the high resolution of them, they gave me quite a bit of real estate to work with, even when doing lots of different tasks.
The whole rig was built around the ThinkVision L220x which I've described before, so I'm not going to repeat the details here. The main advantage of this screen is not only it's performance, but it's small (if you can call a 22" monitor small) size relative to it's resolution (1920 x 1200). The other monitors were a ThinkVision L200p (1600 x 1200) and a Westinghouse 19" TV (1440 x 900). All of these screens were high resolution for their respective sizes and gave me a good amount of desktop real estate to work with.
Some of you will remember that I ran across a Sony SDM-N50 for $20 in a pawn shop that came to live with me. This brought the monitor count up to 4, alleviating any of the 3 bigger screens from duty with the server or client PCs that I happened to be working on at the moment. This situation was all fine for some time; that is until I decided that I really wanted to replace my last CRT which was in the living room A/V system. It had been functioning as a display for the Integra receiver's and iPod dock's menu systems. Unfortunately, over time, this Amdek CRT had developed a horrible hum that was at a very uncomfortable pitch. Sooooo...... I started looking for another monitor to replace the Westinghouse 19" so it could go to the living room.
That's when I discovered the
unloved 19" monitor. It's a sad, sad story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Back in the
old days, which means the time of the square (relatively speaker) displays (4:3 aspect ratio), the 19" was a popular
large size. They were pretty expensive, but would take that 1280 x 1024 size of the 17" and make it big and vibrant looking. However, it's time didn't last, as the reign of the evil wide-screen (16:9, 16:10) came to pass and they took on an awkwardly large amount of space width-wise relative to their resolution which often were 1280 x 768 or even the higher res. 1440 x 900. They also suffered from the double-whammy of arriving around the time of the almighty
HD!!! That's 1080p to you uneducated peasants. OK, what really happened was that manufacturers made the 1080 vertical resolution beginning with 20" or so.
In the meantime, corporations when right on ahead and kept buying 19" monitors by the tens of thousands. Why? Well, they don't care the least bit about HD and that size, especially in the 1440 horizontal resolutions...great for spreadsheet ya know! So, guess what? Lots of them coming "off-lease" without much of a market. Yup, like the kid who's always picked last in PE, they're always available. What does that mean to me? After a bit of research I found the following: we'll start with CHEAP, like less than $50 after shipping off of places like eBay, although I tend to draw the line at $40. And when found in the higher 1440 x 900 resolution, they really are a very nice size for things like explorer windows. Sometimes they can even be found at half that locally on Craigslist.
Although I can't afford to make my desk look like this with 4, 22" high-res displays, I
can make my non-primary displays the smaller/cheaper 19". This works well for me, partially because I'm not a gamer, so I don't need for my side displays to be HD. In fact, the smaller physical size has allowed me to stack two of the 19s on my left side with one of them on the swiveling arm and the other below it on the desk. My preferred methodology in use of displays is as their own little single taks area, where each one is doing ONE thing only. Generally, I have browsers or major apps running on the two 22" screens in front of me, then the one(s) on the left as places were I keep explorer windows open and maybe a peripheral piece of software like a media player. At the moment, I have my L200p there with a resolution of 1600 x 1200, but I'm going to replace this with the two 19" L1940p screens at 1440 x 900 each, making a stack of 1440 x 1800, plus I can use them separately as their own space. That "stack" of configurable space will come at about an $80 investment. I know people who have more than that invested in cables!
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