At one point in time I had two CRT monitors hooked up at home and things were good. But that took up an awful lot of desk space, and so at some point in time I ditched the second monitor. My thinking was that I would shortly thereafter replace the single monitor with twin LCD's. But life intervenes and it's been a long time - I never ran the dual CRT's at our current house and we lived here for two years. But finally a little over a week ago I acquired two new Dell widescreen 20" LCD's. Here's some before and and after pics of my desk setup. (oooh, how exciting!)
BEFORE:
So before I had my 20" CRT on the left, tucked into the corner below the Penny Arcade print. (There was a light behind the monitor - that's not some fancy Photoshop glow.) The monitor, keyboard, and mouse all went through a 4-way switchbox so I could flip between my Windows box, my Linux box, and the Powerbook. In these pictures they are hooked up to the Powerbook and I'm using it as a second monitor for the Mac. This worked pretty well unless I needed to access the Windows and Mac desktops simultaneously. Then I had to either move the laptop to the right or type on the keyboard way back there. I was just stuck in single-monitor land when using the Windows box. This is frustrating for programming. Once you get used to two monitors it's difficult to go back.
AFTER:
Much better! The left monitor is hooked up to the switchbox again, and the right monitor connects directly to my Windows PC. The left monitor can swivel left and get connected to my Mac - it has multiple inputs so it can flip between the Windows box and the Mac. If I want to use both desktops I set the Windows box to only use the right monitor and then get two screens on the Mac, and the rightmost screen on Windows. As a extra bonus I now get to look directly out my window.
As for the monitors themselves - Dell was having a 15% sale on LCD's so the pair of them cost just over $800 which is nice. I priced the the Apple LCD's but the 20" is almost as expensive as a pair of Dell's and they support the same resolution (1680 x 1050).
I've been using this setup for a week now, and I'm really happy with the change. Two monitors rock!
technorati tags:office, monitors, LCD, desk
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