Which monitor?

[ChrisGreaves]

What sort of monitor should I buy?
Or at least, should I worry?
I ask because of my recent burnout with drivers.
My lovely reconditioned ($50) ACER LCD 17" diagonal burned out three months ago after about five years faithful service; that's $10/year.
Cecilia's discarded ($0) DELL E773C CRT monster is starting to go green on me at awkward moments; I figure I have about a week.
The new Compaq Presario CQ62 Notebook screen measures 13.5" by 7.5", and I find it too wide and not high enough for my liking (viewing Word documents and web pages)
I figure that
(*) a low-cost model from BestBuy, FutureShop, TigerDirect et al will set me back about $100 if I get in before the holiday sales end.
(*) a ratio of 1.3:1 is more to my liking than a ratio of 1.8:1 for me.
Monitors nowadays are all LCD, slim screen, so there's no choice there.

Two questions:
(1) Screens on display at this typical store all appear to be way wider than high, that is, about 2:1 ratio. Am I likely to get a monitor with what I think of as a regular screen, or has the world gone made-for-movies-mad?
(2) Given that I'm buying a popular monitor from a popular store, are drivers likely to be a problem? The Notebook was purchased two weeks ago. can I assume that run-of-the-mill monitors are generally well-supported?

[JoeP]

Get the largest full HD monitor your budget will allow or get two somewhat smaller ones if your system will support two. Many people will attest to significant productivity gains by using two monitors. You might also check out refurbished monitors from large OEMs such as Dell or HP.

Joe

[Hey Jude]

Do they have our illustrious "Hans" in mind?

[HansV]

Nah, that'd be

monitor.jpg

[Hey Jude]

ROFL I don't know how to do that!

[PaulB]

Most monitors on the market today have an aspect ratio of 16:9 with a resolution of 1920x1080 (full HD as suggested by Joe). Some allow for landscape (horizontal) and portrait (vertical) viewing. The latter may be of interest to you because it's great for long Word documents.

[HansV]

ROFL I don't know how to do that!

I used correction fluid... ;-)

[Hey Jude]

ROFL I don't know how to do that!

I used correction fluid... ;-)

I fooled around with Paint and came up with

HANSV edit.jpg

[jonwallace]

(2) Given that I'm buying a popular monitor from a popular store, are drivers likely to be a problem? The Notebook was purchased two weeks ago. can I assume that run-of-the-mill monitors are generally well-supported?

Drivers shouldn't be a problem, given that here we regularly swap monitors between the Dell, HP and other PCs here in the lab, without bothering about installing drivers at all. Even so, monitors I've bought (I bought one separately once) came with a driver disk.

[ChrisGreaves]

Get the largest full HD monitor your budget will allow or get two somewhat smaller ones if your system will support two. Many people will attest to significant productivity gains by using two monitors. You might also check out refurbished monitors from large OEMs such as Dell or HP.

Thanks Joe. I see from PaulB (above) that I am probably being steered towards the 16:9 ratio (which appears to me to be a movie screen). certainly those are what the chain stores feature in their web pages.
Budgets being what they are I shall probably buy one and check it out first. I still make use of my Radio Shack KVM switch from five years ago to switch between two computers using one Keyboard/Video/Mouse set.
The Acer was a refurbished monitor from a local store; it gave good mileage, but I'm not so sure about buying a refurbished monitor remotely.

[stuck]

Get the largest full HD monitor your budget will allow or get two somewhat smaller ones if your system will support two. Many people will attest to significant productivity gains by using two monitors. You might also check out refurbished monitors from large OEMs such as Dell or HP.

Thanks Joe. I see from PaulB (above) that I am probably being steered towards the 16:9 ratio (which appears to me to be a movie screen). certainly those are what the chain stores feature in their web pages.
Budgets being what they are I shall probably buy one and check it out first. I still make use of my Radio Shack KVM switch from five years ago to switch between two computers using one Keyboard/Video/Mouse set.
The Acer was a refurbished monitor from a local store; it gave good mileage, but I'm not so sure about buying a refurbished monitor remotely.

Joe's right, get the biggest full HD monitor you can afford and you really should look into having two monitors on the one PC. Once you hook up a second monitor you will wonder how on earth you ever managed with only one for all those years.

Here in the UK 4:3 monitors are still available, maybe by browsing this list you can track down equivalent models in your part of the world.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

... and portrait (vertical) viewing. The latter may be of interest to you because it's great for long Word documents.

Thanks Paul. I'll keep an eye out.
This Notebook with the 1.8:1 ratio aggravates me slightly.
I get the double penalties of not much vertical space, and a long travel-distance with the mouse to reach the right-hand side scroll bars.
I notice it most when viewing web pages such as newspapers, now that they populate the top 50% of the page with advertisements, but it also reduces the amount of text in a Word document when I am using columns.

[ChrisGreaves]

Drivers shouldn't be a problem, given that here we regularly swap monitors between the Dell, HP and other PCs here in the lab, without bothering about installing drivers at all.

Thanks Jon, for the confirmation.
I feel burned by the (sudden!) absence of drivers for my scanner and my printer.
I half-guessed that new equipment ought to be compatible with new equipment and software.
(It's the extra bus fare - $5 return - to take the product back that hurts (grin!))

[HansV]

I've had a 1920 x 1200 monitor (16:10 aspect ratio) for a year now. It's wide enough to arrange two applications (e.g. Word and Excel) side by side. I hardly maximize windows any more. (It wasn't easy to get rid of my ingrained habit to maximize all windows).

[ChrisGreaves]

... you really should look into having two monitors on the one PC. Once you hook up a second monitor you will wonder how on earth you ever managed with only one for all those years.

Ken, thanks for this advice, but it prompts a further question:
What *is* the advantage of two monitors?
Does it just do away with my current practice of using Alt-Tab and my short-term memory to flip between two applications?

I heard last month of some software that my correspondent uses to drive 6 computers, each with a monitor, in a 2-row, 3-column array. The software detects when the mouse scrolls past the edge of a screen and automatically transfers itself to the adjacent computer.
This to my mind is different from a multi-screen system on one computer.

I am all in favor of maximizing the amount of data available to my eyes/brain, and minimizing the amount of use of my rotator cuff, carpal tunnel etc.

[ChrisGreaves]

I've had a 1920 x 1200 monitor (16:10 aspect ratio) for a year now. It's wide enough to arrange two applications (e.g. Word and Excel) side by side. I hardly maximize windows any more. (It wasn't easy to get rid of my ingrained habit to maximize all windows).

Ah!
Now we're getting somewhere (although I recognize the snide remark about "getting rid of old habits" - hah hah!!)
I hadn't thought of using the screen for two applications; I too am a keen user of maximized windows.

I see that if my work involved copious amounts of transferring data between, say, Word and Excel, I'd set my two applications up at 9a.m. and copy/paste happily all day long.

Suppose I also am called upon the diddle between email and browser at intervals.
Do I then set up two more sized windows side-by-side for mail & browser?

If so, then presumably when I switch to mail/browser I perform a couple of Alt-Tab actions (as I do currently) to bring that pair to the font, causing Word/Excel to go back.

Is that how you work it?

[StuartR]

...
What *is* the advantage of two monitors?
Does it just do away with my current practice of using Alt-Tab and my short-term memory to flip between two applications?
...

Now I am used tp running with two monitors, I cannot imagine having to revert to just one.

My preference is to have a 4:3 monitor for the main screen, leaving room for a decent size taskbar at the bottom. I can then have a wide screen second screen which is perfect for displaying two documents or one wide screen movie.

The main advantage is the ability to SEE multiple documents at the same time. For example I may be comparing the contents of a word document and Acrobat file and an excel spreadsheet.

[HansV]

Yes. At work, I have 2 monitors: the laptop's 1280 x 800 screen and an external 1280 x 1024 monitor.
I usually have the browser and Excel on the external monitor, and the mail client and Word on the laptop screen. Additional applications usually on the larger external monitor.

At home, I have - as mentioned - a single 1920 x 1200 monitor. For example Excel on the left, and Excel's Visual Basic Editor on the right, etc.

[ChrisGreaves]

Now I am used to running with two monitors, I cannot imagine having to revert to just one.

Thanks Stuart.
I am emboldened to try an experiment.
I have the notebook screen, and the DELL E773C screen.
I have worked out how to display on one and have the other turned "off", and as I type this response I have both monitors displaying the same thing - "Duplicate these displays". (If I turn my head slightly to the right I can see myself typing on the DELL screen).

The Screen resolution dialog has an entry "Extend these displays" which I thought might be the setup for twin displays. Am I correct in this?
When I set "Extend these displays" I seem to get my application, e.g. Mail, on one monitor but the other monitor shows only the desktop.

Reason is I thought to make sure that the Notebook/Win7 supported twin displays before considering buying two.

43.png

[ChrisGreaves]

Yes. At work, I have 2 monitors:

HIGH EXCITEMENT.
Following from my previous post, I now have Word displayed on the DELL and WordVBE on the laptop.
This is hugely interesting.
My mouse, however, seems to be restricted to the laptop monitor; perhaps because of my KVM switch? (Nope, using the mousepad of the notebook I find the mouse is still restricted to the laptop).
Hans, do you get to "slide" the mouse from one screen to the next?

At least I know that this notebook/Win7 system supports dual screens.
And I wouldn't have known that except for you guys! Thanks.

Next question: Where do we go from here? Three screens?