Large Screen Displays for programmers

[rwo123gr]

While i know the larger displays (particularly the westy37in) get great reviews, i'm not sure what the best option is for people who actually have to read text all day.

I've seen some people use two widscreens rotated 90 degrees, but the larger monitors would still have more room, but lower resolution. Maybe it's better to just have two setups, one for work and one for play? Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[joemama]

I would choose a single, large display with a high quality panel and high resolution (not a lcd-tv)....something like the Dell 3007WFP-HC.

 

[modi123]

While i know the larger displays (particularly the westy37in) get great reviews, i'm not sure what the best option is for people who actually have to read text all day.

I've seen some people use two widscreens rotated 90 degrees, but the larger monitors would still have more room, but lower resolution. Maybe it's better to just have two setups, one for work and one for play? Anyone have any thoughts?

As I type this I am on two dell LCD 21" widescreens @ 1600 by 1200... I love it, and it some what breaks my heart when I go home to a 19" CRT... *shurg* so it goes.

I have problem reading text, but I do enjoy the two screens for the extra real estate and the ability to snap things to certain monitors. Truthfully I could use a third one for databasing, but so it goes.

Oh, as I think about it, I do love the fact my monitors break into an obtuse angle - one's visible to those passing my cube, the other isn't. Lunch time videogames, or posting on here, have been made simpler and less stressful. lol.

 

[MikeW888]

I'm looking for a large screen for programming as well. I getting tired of shuffling windows around when coding. My PC can handle dual screens and I tried that for a while with dual 19" CRTs but given their spacing and the fact there's no usable "middle" area between the two displays makes it feels very awkward. I also have a Mac Mini that I'm trying to switch to for coding and that can only handle a single display so I'm looking for large widescreen LCD display.

In terms of resolution I've decided on 1920 horizontal as the ideal size. That allows for a 1024 pixel width browser window for proofing and a fairly wide editing window. 1680/1600 is a bit too narrow to have two windows side-by-side and 2560 has other issues such as not working on the Mac Mini.

However I require something that has a relatively large dot pitch since my eyesight sucks which limits my options drastically. Currently I'm typing this on an 19" CRT set at 1024 x 768 which works out to 71.11 PPI. On an LCD I can go with a slightly higher PPI given the generally sharper quality of the text, but not too much higher. A typical 24" 1920 x 1200 LCD display has a ridiculously high PPI (for my eyesight) of 94.34 (the 23" Apple Cinema Display is even worse). 9 point text is basically unreadable to me on those kinds of displays. The Dell 27" measures in at 83.86 PPI which still isn't great but may be doable though it's hard for me to know for sure without actually using the monitor for a while.

So I've been looking at the Sharp LC-32GP1U which is a 32" HDTV/monitor with 1920 x 1080 resolution which works out to 68.84 PPI which is a larger dot pitch than what I'm using now but I can probably compensate by moving the display further back since it's nowhere as deep as my CRT which takes up most of the depth of my desk.

 

[mikeblas]

At home, I have two Dell 2001FP displays on my main rig. At my new job, I have a single Dell 3007.

The dual monitor setup has the advantage of letting me put the debugger on another monitor, so I can leave the program under test on its own screen. This is invaluable for debugging window sizing issues, focus problems, and painting code.

The single monitor setup is simply, well, big. I can open lots of child windows in Visual Studio and place them wherever I'd like. That's helpful, but there's still a ton of wasted realestate because programs don't scale well; lists of things don't become columnized, for instance, when they see that they have lots of wide-screen real-estate to use.

It's surprising to me how many programs are still ill-behaved on multi-monitor systems. The Adobe tools are all very unruly on a multiple monitor dsektop, and Adboe seems apathetic about bugs. Little programs that I get for various purposes -- you know, the program that comes with your scanner to read documents; "toys" like WinAmp, and so on -- all get sick on multiple monitors in different ways.