The Story of The Unloved 19" Monitor

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!

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.