24 Comments
Sep 27, 2021Liked by John Birmingham

The advantage of two screens up close is being able to angle them (as per photo) having one's line of sight perpendicular to each screen. Not that I have the option in my office in the workplace where I have two screens, but find I always have them angled (in fact I have one pointing straight at my chair, and the other angled off it so most of the time I'm facing directly towards the desk).

I recently found myself in need of a new screen (24") and so ordered it from a well-known purveyor of cheap electronics such as these. Still waiting, but every day I get an e-mail trying to interest me in purchasing, among other things, a 24" screen.

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Yeah, the angling thing does sound like my wife. Whereas the wanting super maximum screen size everywhere wrapping around your entire visual field might be my own personal kink. I should probs consult her.

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On further reflection, also 34" may not be enough. IANAL but I do deal often deal with law, and I'll have (say) on my main screen a document I'm working on and a couple of windows with legislation open on the other, and wishing I had more real-estate than 2 x 24".

That said, as we know, consultation after decisions have been made is the most efficient form of consultation.

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Just to put a spanner in the works, my intellectual property colleagues often have one screen horizontal and the other vertical.

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Monsters

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A while back I used to have a 27 + vertical 24 setup in the work office, but the second monitor got nixed during some illfounded upgrade. I liked the arrangement a lot: mostly work on the 27, but able to throw whole "pages" of code or whatever up on the vertical one was often very useful.

I haven't tried it, but I feel that going much bigger than that would either require too much head-turning and eye focusing, or need to be too far away for comfortable reading. The focusing is more difficult these later years. Very annoying.

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Yeah, that's why I downsized from a 27 inch iMac to the new 24 model. I was finding that the edge of the screen was far enough away to be a bit blurry to my ageing peepers.

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yeah I have been thinking about switching to that setup. I have a pair of 29" widescreens that gives me 1.5m of horizontal screen space....kinda overkill. with all the wordage work I do, the portrait aspect does suite the need. might also suite the thinky legal mumbo jumbo

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Sep 27, 2021Liked by John Birmingham

What’s the side to side distance? I have two 21” monitors virtually side by side but if there’s a gap between the two as in the last photo then that space would be nicely filled by screen real estate.

Of course, once there is one, you will always need two.

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I measured my two, and they appear to be about 44" on the diagonal, as Mat has suggested.

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you could of course just ask the person who is going to use them which they prefer? In my experience that is the sexier outcome.

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This is radical. It's crazy, but it just might work

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Two 32 inch 4k Samsung screens would work great. Providing you have plenty of graphics card grunt to run them , a GTX 1060 works for me. So you get 4 times the resolution per screen and can fit lots of easy to read text on screens with multiple apps running. Plus you can turn one monitor into a reading pane by putting it portrait ways. Plus a new box with all sorts of RGB led turning her office into Christmas all year round.

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Apart from consulting Jane on her requirements and preferences first, speaking as an IT person that does a lot of wordage perhaps a 40"? My team do mobile apps development and the devs all prefer big ass 40" monitors for their work. The BA (me) and the QAs have to settle for twin 21" monitors angled together...

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This seems discriminatory.

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A bit, but we don't need 4K resolution to write user stories and test apps, whereas the developers need it to be able to render UI designs etc properly. At least that's what they SAY. They certainly sulk and have attacks of the vapours whenever someone suggests they downsize to standard monitors 😂

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You could also cheap out and just get some decent monitor stands and rescue those poor books!

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Got two coming from the Beast of Bezos.

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Probably the wisest thing to do is search a shop that sells PC monitors and take the Mrs. with you to that establishment. Women know which size suits them ;-) .

Knowing the profession J is in, she will need also a lot of real estate for documents and other printed stuff. Is wall mounting a monitor also an option?

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wallmounting as in using a VESA swivel arm ;-)

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You are of course, going with the larger curved monitor? That takes reasonably good care of the angle in requirement I have found.

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Do the big curved monitors have good resolution? It strikes me that there could be a problem with trying to feed them from a single HDMI cable/socket. Two monitors let two graphics outputs run at once, so you can have 4k on each.

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so, I think that most of the ultra wide 34" screens are only 21:9 aspect ratio - so only about 1/3 wider that a normal "wide screen" 16:9 where as the 43" and 48" screens are closer to 32:9 - ie the same width as 2 wide screen monitors

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Hadn't thought of aspect ratio, but yes, you're right.

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