Widescreen or Double Monitors?

[crokett]

I would go with dual monitors and get the widest ones you can. I run dual at work - have a flat screen as my main and keep the laptop monitor active for some text-based stuff.

[Tom Slick]

I think I am going to buy a 19" wide screen and try the current 17" as the side screen. This setup fits into the current budget.

anything wrong with samsung or LG monitors? my current monitor is a samsung and it seems pretty good.

[StickSeler]

No help here, I run a dell and viewsonic and like them both

[drumpriest]

At home it's a wide screen single, at work it's a 4x3 set of 2....

[poolhound]

I guess it really depends on what you are doing, I have tried both. If you have multiple apps that you must see and use at the same time dual screen works well.

I do a lot of photo and graphics work and I use a 24" dell widescreen and love it. I find for photo work you want as much real estate on one screen as you can get. I did look at the 30" but its a bit big for me and you can get issues with viewing angle at the extremities where it can affect precise color and hue.

[American & Proud]

Another vote for Triple monitors. I run 3- 19" LCD's on a triple MoVu stand at home here. I dabbled with Photoshop as a hobby. I set mine up right before the Wide screens became the norm and affordable. I run 2 Vid cards. I could never go back to a single monitor system.

[jziegler]

I'll go against most of what's been said, and I'll say that for most graphics work/CAD and anything like that, stay away from widescreen monitors, unless your work almost always fits that format. Why? because the total resolution on widescreen LCDs is lower than the 4:3 traditional ones. For example, a 20" 4:3 monitor is 1600x1200, for 1.92 million pixels. A widescreen 20" monitor is 1680x1050 (or lower sometimes) for 1.764 million pixels. When you need resolution, the 4:3 is better. For the electronics CAD I do at work, I'll take the higher resolution over widescreen any day. I'm working to get a second monitor too, but that probably will be of a little less use. I see the second monitor as mostly being useful for toolbars and thing like that.

I also went from dual monitor to single at home because I wanted to get rid of the bulky CRTs and didn't have money for a second LCD, and with the slightly higher resolution on the LCD I have (1280x1024 vs. 1024x768 on each of the CRTs I used) it has been acceptable. I want bigger, but something with better color accuracy for photo editing is expensive.

Jim

[pelligrini]

I think I am going to buy a 19" wide screen and try the current 17" as the side screen. This setup fits into the current budget.

anything wrong with samsung or LG monitors? my current monitor is a samsung and it seems pretty good.

You probably won't like having different monitor sizes when using a spanned desktop. I did that for a short while when one of my 22" CRTs failed. I only had a 19" CRT as a replacement at the time. It really drove me nuts. It's still better than just one though.

I've been using Samsung widescreen LCDs for a couple years now and I like them. There is a pair of 22" on my home desk that replaced the CRTs and another 22" on the side of my bed. My office workstation still has a pair of Dell 21" CRTs. I wouldn't by an LG. I haven't tried their monitors, but anything else LG that I have tried is not working anymore.

For CAD work go with the biggest you can afford/fit. I bought myself a Viewsonic 21" CRT for the office before I got myself a computer for the house. It was one of the best purchases I have done. The rest of the firm was using 15" basketball shaped monitors.

The latest versions of Autocad are really getting toolpallet heavy. I still keyboard most all of my commands, but there are a few tools I keep up to the side. We've been dabbeling with Autocad Architecture and it has many, many pallets and other screens. I couldn't imagine drawing with just one monitor anymore.

I don't use it, but there are a couple guys in the office that love ultramon. It's a pretty robust display app. You might check it out, especially if your video card software has weak features.

[Tom Slick]

Update:

I bought a 22" widescreen LG monitor that is now set up in tandem with my old Samsung 17". I was able to use my existing video card. the 22" screen is hooked up through the DVI cable (expensive!!) and the 17" though the VGA cable. setting the two up was easy using the video card's software although XP's controls does a decent basic job of setting them up.
This setup works great! the vertical size and resolution isn't very different between the two so moving from one monitor to the other isn't an issue. Email and tool bars go onto the side monitor while important stuff like BT3central sits on the main monitor.

it's amazing that at one time I had "upgraded" to a 15" from a 13". now I run two monitors, one of which is a 22". not that long ago engineers and artists were the only ones with anything over 17"