Tag: Computer monitor

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The Engineer’s Itch

On Saturday I’ve got the Engineer’s Itch. You know, the itch to take apart something that is working perfectly well and try to improve it. To scratch it I added a second video card and a monitor to my computer.

All I had in my box-o-junk was an old video card and a crappy 15 inch monitor, but even with that a dual monitor desktop is absolutely awesome. It works really great with Photoshop – I can move all the annoying toolbars to the left screen. I also moved the mess of shortcuts, install files and folders with junk to the left. Now my main desktop is very clean and organized.

It’s great for having multiple browser windows open, doing some reading during long and annoying installs (you can have a non-resizable window on the first monitor and another one on the second). Ok, next step is to buy decent lcd monitors and setting them up like that. I don’t want to go back to a single monitor setup.

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Memex Ahoy!

You’ll see, you’ll see. We will be all using memexes instead of the horrible pee-cees of today. It looks like even hardware is moving in that direction now. The first harbinger – dual displays are becoming almost commonplace.

For years it was possible to stick more than one video card into a box, hook a few monitors and have a two screened desktop in most modern windowing systems. Even Windows. Especially Windows.

But having two huge CRT monitors is not a picnic – they took up too much desk space, generated too much heat. And don’t forget radiation. But guess what – lcds are dirt cheap these days. Well, maybe if gold containing ore was dirt, but still they are kind of affordable. And multi flat monitor setups are so fricking amazing!

Ladies and gentlemen, start your droolers.

This was pure underwear soiling goodness from 9xmedia. Those are not cheap. But this is just one of the many, many different dual monitor products on the market. Check out this gallery of multi monitor setups. I will probably splurge on a 17 inch flat panel and a nice dual head video card for now. Should cost me about $600. I’ll keep my 5 year old CRT as the second monitor for now.