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Last post Author Topic: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?  (Read 31143 times)

mouser

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #25 on: May 20, 2014, 04:27 PM »
What resolution are you running at, deo?

Mizraim

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #26 on: May 20, 2014, 04:43 PM »
Now you're going to have to find 4k resolution wallpaper that you like. :)

wraith808

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #27 on: May 20, 2014, 04:59 PM »
How does it work for gaming?  (you knew that one was coming...)

tomos

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #28 on: May 20, 2014, 05:17 PM »
^ and how about viewing angles?
(so long as they're okay when you look from your 'fixed' sitting position)
Tom

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #29 on: May 20, 2014, 06:19 PM »
Anyone use a rotated monitor in portrait mode for coding?

A bit old but...

Yes. And I love it.

I have 3 monitors on this box. 2 x 24" and a 22". The setup is 24" (landscape) - 24" (portrait) - 22" (landscape).

I keep Visual Studio on a landscape monitor, then tear off a document tab and put that in the portrait monitor. Generally I work with 2 monitors side-by-side for 1 task with the third being for email, surfing, video, Skype, or whatever else.

But portrait is beautiful, especially when you want to see more of your code.

I didn't go for 27" because of space limitations on my desktop and costs. 24" is lots big enough for me (even if I'd rather have 27"), and the limited space with 4 monitors (I have a Mac as well) on my desktop really stops me from having more. I already have about 120 degrees of monitors, and pushing that to 180 degrees would really make things more difficult.
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ewemoa

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #30 on: May 20, 2014, 08:14 PM »
Nice to have so much space!



On a side note, I've taken to trying to keep the length of my functions short enough so I can see each one in its entirety without scrolling.  I also try to keep my screens adjusted so the "viewable-without-scrolling" attribute remains true across a variety of screens (the smaller end being around 1024x768 with typical font sizes).  This has the side benefit of making it easier on other folks who might work with code developed in this environment -- also leads to more functions :)

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #31 on: May 20, 2014, 10:37 PM »
1024X768 was my golden setting for years on older monitors.

These days on my newer (but dying!) 24" I'm at 1280X960, though I think the relative fonts are a hair big due to my less that fantastic vision. The monitor itself can go far higher, I think up to 1600X something, that I use about once a year for some extremely specific use case.


kyrathaba

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #32 on: May 20, 2014, 10:48 PM »
Really nice, Deozaan :)

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #33 on: May 23, 2014, 03:08 AM »
What resolution are you running at, deo?

4K resolution, which is four times the pixels of 1080p. Or in other words: 3840x2160 (1920*2 = 3840 and 1080*2 = 2160)

At 39", it's basically like having a 2x2 grid of 19" 1080p monitors. :D

And don't ask me why they call it 4K. There's nothing 4K about it. IMO they should call it 2K since 2160 is just over 2K pixels and for HD they measured by vertical pixels when advertising 1080p.

Now you're going to have to find 4k resolution wallpaper that you like. :)

I already went to VladStudio.com to re-download the majority of my wallpapers at a higher resolution. Sadly, they aren't offered in 4K resolution. )c: So for now I've resorted to the largest images I can get (2880x1800 which is 16:10) with the option to "fill screen but maintain aspect ratio" which means that parts of the images get cut off, but surprisingly they still look pretty good.

How does it work for gaming?  (you knew that one was coming...)

Even though my previous monitor was HD+ (16:10, 1920x1200), this is kind of my first HDTV. I bought an HDTV several years ago when the 19" LCD panels were still about $350. I wasn't willing to get one that small for that price, so I managed to find a fairly cheap CRT that was something like 32" (4:3) and could only handle 720p or 1080i at the best, so not fully HD. It worked alright, but honestly I never really tried much HD gaming on that TV until a couple of months ago when I got a WiiU and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It was not a good experience because I couldn't read the text on the TV. It wasn't a matter of it being too small or me being too far away. It was literally illegible on that TV. So I did try that game again on this TV and even though technically it should look somewhat worse than on a 1080p screen due to having four times as many pixels (thus, the image is scaled at 2x which should result in more jaggies and artifacts, etc.), it's a vast improvement over my old TV and I thought it looked great and it was really nice, as this is also the largest screen of any kind I've ever owned. Console gaming on a big TV is really nice. It's no 70", but I'm perfectly OK with that. :-D

My experience with PC gaming on this TV has been both glorious and frustrating.

The fan on my GPU started acting up a couple of months ago (actually it started acting up about a year or two ago, and only recently started failing almost completely), so it doesn't spin up properly and will often stop spinning entirely for a second or two before attempting to spin up, only to repeat the process again and again and again. This means that my GPU tends to overheat, especially when doing GPU-intensive things such as watching video or playing games. Combine that with the fact that the GPU has to work even harder to push 4 times as many pixels each frame, and it makes for a very hot GPU.

Honestly, I've been pretty busy this week and haven't done much gaming on it. But even before I got this TV I was having to drastically reduce graphical settings to keep games from making my GPU so hot (over 100 C) that my computer would shut down without warning. (I've since installed SpeedFan and set it up to beep at me when my GPU starts getting that hot, so I can alt-tab out of game, or move the camera somewhere less graphically intensive to let the GPU cool down a bit).

But the bad thing about this TV is that it uses an older HDMI standard (and no DisplayPort) which means that it can only run 4K and 2K resolutions at 30Hz refresh rate. This low refresh rate can cause some issues. I tried out CS:GO at 4K at max settings for a few minutes just to see how it ran. It was nice. But screen tearing always bothers me, so I enabled V-Sync (which limited the FPS to 30) and it made the mouse movement feel lagged. Even in the menu/UI, I'd move the mouse and wouldn't see the cursor update the position right away, so I'd often overshoot when going for a button on the UI, and go right past it. It was very difficult to play the game with that kind of delayed input.

I played an older game called Majesty 2 at full settings (with shadows turned down one notch, since somehow that made things go from super choppy to super smooth even though I couldn't tell any visual difference between the two settings). It's pretty awesome to see it so big and pristine. But there was one big problem! The UI didn't scale with the resolution. So all the UI seemed super tiny on the borders of the screen. It plays like an RTS, so unit information will be at the bottom, with action/build shortcuts in the bottom right corner, minimap and related functions in the bottom left corner, some special use items in the top left corner, and game speed controls and menus in the top right corner. They were so small, it felt like a real chore having to move my mouse cursor all the way across the screen to press the icons. It made me really wish there were more hotkeys for all the different actions.

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about. It's hard to even see any UI on the top of the screen of the smaller preview of the image.

It's hard to express it properly. The UI actually isn't tiny. It's the size it always was on my 1920x1200 monitor. But it is tiny relative to everything else. And there's so much space between everything, there's so much distance that my mouse or eyes have to travel to see or click the pertinent information that it's kind of annoying. I'd rather it all sort of hug the top center and bottom center of the screen instead of being docked to the corners.

I've also been playing a lot of Dungeon Defenders lately, and... I have to say that local multiplayer is where this thing really shines! As I said, it's like having four 19" 1080p monitors. So 2-4 players on the screen at once, splitscreen, is awesome! (Interestingly, I have VSync enabled in DD as well, but I haven't noticed any input lag)

Or if the game can be played well entirely with a controller (such as Dark Souls), the cable on my Xbox 360 Controller (for Windows) is so long that I can go sit or lay on my couch and play. It's essentially the console experience of playing with a gamepad on a big screen but with the benefits of the PC experience such as mods or graphics/texture fixes/improvements, etc.

But like I said, I've been pretty busy this week and haven't had much time to do much real gaming on this thing yet. And that combined with my dying GPU fan means that I've testing some things out for a few minutes here and there, but I'll probably need to either find some aftermarket cooler for this GPU or buy a new GPU entirely.

Speaking of which, can anybody help me find an aftermarket cooler for the XFX Radeon HD 6870? So far I've found:


I'm still very happy with the graphical processing capabilities of my current GPU, and I feel like the only time I should have to upgrade my GPU is when I need more graphical capabilities out of it, not because it's impossible to keep cool (or impossible to repair/replace the fan)! It's so infuriating that they don't just use a regular fan mount bracket thingy so that I can buy a $10 replacement and fix it!

Hmm... Actually I just went to the NewEgg listing for the card (since I can't even find the card on XFX's website) and saw others complaining about the fan dying, with a response saying to contact their support for a free replacement fan. Technically it should still be under the original 3 year warranty, but I don't think I "registered" the product and the 3-year warranty only applies if you register within 30 days of purchase or some such nonsense. I've sent them an email and hopefully they'll fix it for free.

^ and how about viewing angles?
(so long as they're okay when you look from your 'fixed' sitting position)

Viewing angles seem pretty good to me. Probably even better than my previous monitor. On my old monitor I could tell a difference in the color from the top and bottom of the screen, even from my "fixed" sitting position. The way I have things set up in the summer is my desk is in the living room, so if I'd have company over for a movie or whatever, we'd usually pull the couch out from the wall and put it in front of the computer since my monitor was better quality than my TV. But if I laid down on my couch without adjusting my monitor's tilt, the screen could appear pretty dark and hard to see the details.

But I'd guess this TV has about 160-175 degree viewing angle. As I move to the side while looking at it, there's a point at which it appears to darken slightly, then it stays at that same level of brightness and clarity until I'm almost completely at a 90 degree angle to it. And just to test, I move my office chair to the side and laid down on the ground (so, lower than the couch would be) and I could still see the screen just fine. In fact, just today my girlfriend and another friend and I watched a movie on Netflix on this thing. We were all tired since we'd just gotten back from hiking for a couple of hours around the mountains nearby, so my friend laid on the floor while watching, and my girlfriend and I were on the couch and we all could see it just fine from our various odd angles. I didn't even realize how that would not have worked well at all on my old monitor until you got me thinking about it just now. Cool!

If you need more information about the TV, you can check the specifications here on the Amazon listing (where I bought it) or from Seiki's own website. But I don't see any viewing angles listed anywhere in there. . .

techidave

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #34 on: May 23, 2014, 04:46 AM »
with the new one being so large, do you find its like in your face?  which can be uncomfortable.

Ath

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #35 on: May 23, 2014, 06:03 AM »
I tried to find a 4K 'rated' TV/Monitor like this one, locally, but the 'smallest' I found so far are 55". And Amazon doesn't ship this cutie to EU :(

@Deozaan:
I am a bit worried about the refresh/flickering at 30 Hz; is that in any way noticeable? I can be quite tiring if the screen is flickering, even when hardly noticeable.
Though technically our 50 Hz AC frequency shouldn't interfere in any way with the 30 Hz of the screen, I'm not convinced until it's actually tested and proven :huh:

kwacky1

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #36 on: May 23, 2014, 07:39 AM »
I recently had the 'pleasure' to use a 32" monitor from Dell that ran at 3840x2160 for a couple of days and I must say, I prefer to have multiple monitors.
Even though my RDP sessions at 1920x1200 only took up a quarter of the screen I just found it harder to manage my windows.
I seemed to just end up with everything on the either the left or the right (why doesn't windows 7 have a built in horizontal snap).
Plus I had to crank the DPI right up to the max to make the text bearable to read.

I use 2 x 20" at 1600x1200 and sometimes wouldn't mind a 3rd monitor, even a widescreen one would probably do the trick for some of those side x side code windows/log file trawling.

tomos

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #37 on: May 23, 2014, 07:53 AM »
New 19" 5:4 (!) IPS monitor from EIZO coming out in the autumn
http://www.eizo.com/...can/s1933/index.html

517187231685966.jpg

probably not of much interest to coders (?) but nice to see the option.
Tom

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #38 on: May 23, 2014, 05:26 PM »
with the new one being so large, do you find its like in your face?  which can be uncomfortable.

I did feel it was a little bit too close. I thought I had scooted it back as far on my desk as it would go (which isn't very far because my desk has a printer stand (or something) on it) but I just checked and I was able to move it a few inches farther back. It feels a lot more comfortable now, though I still turn and tilt my head slightly to see all the corners. (But I'm sure I'd turn my head if I had a dual monitor setup as well.)

This "problem" with having to turn/tilt my head is exacerbated somewhat by the fact that I am now far enough away from the screen that things start to get a little blurry. This means that I have to wear my glasses (which I usually don't wear at home, since most of the time when I'm at home I don't need to see far distances). So the top of the screen is not within the viewing frame of my glasses, so I have to tilt my head upward somewhat to see the top of the screen clearly.

I'm worried this might cause issues for me as I tend to get headaches when I wear my glasses for too long.

Basically, in order for me to sit far back enough for the TV to be a comfortable distance where I can view all parts of the screen by only moving my eyes instead of my head, I'm no longer close enough to comfortably reach my keyboard and mouse. This could be fixed with a different desk, or wireless keyboard and mouse setup, but those solutions each have their own drawbacks (such as cost or convenience) and I'd still need to wear my glasses while using the computer.

I tried to find a 4K 'rated' TV/Monitor like this one, locally, but the 'smallest' I found so far are 55". And Amazon doesn't ship this cutie to EU :(

@Deozaan:
I am a bit worried about the refresh/flickering at 30 Hz; is that in any way noticeable? I can be quite tiring if the screen is flickering, even when hardly noticeable.
Though technically our 50 Hz AC frequency shouldn't interfere in any way with the 30 Hz of the screen, I'm not convinced until it's actually tested and proven :huh:

I haven't noticed any flickering on the display at all. This was something that worried me as well, as I've been very sensitive to flickering on CRT displays in the past. Thought honestly, I can't remember if it was ever a problem for me on LCDs. But that could be because every LCD I've used had a good refresh rate, though I think perhaps it's a difference between the display technologies of CRT and LCD/LED.

But anyway, as I said, no problems at all with flickering at the lower refresh rate. And as I said before, the viewing angles are really nice. It's been a real pleasure to look at this thing. :-D

I recently had the 'pleasure' to use a 32" monitor from Dell that ran at 3840x2160 for a couple of days and I must say, I prefer to have multiple monitors.
Even though my RDP sessions at 1920x1200 only took up a quarter of the screen I just found it harder to manage my windows.
I seemed to just end up with everything on the either the left or the right (why doesn't windows 7 have a built in horizontal snap).
Plus I had to crank the DPI right up to the max to make the text bearable to read.

I'm experiencing some of these feelings as well. There is so much space that I almost don't know what to do with it. I'm still trying to tweak the settings to get things to display to my liking. I've had to go into accessibility settings to increase the size of the mouse cursor, because I'd have a hard time locating it, or I'd lose it while moving it across the screen. I also had to increase my mouse movement speed and acceleration settings so that it didn't take so long to get across the screen. I've also increased the text size for everything, and often press ctrl-+ in my browser to increase font sizes there as well. And I made the start menu/task bar larger (disabling the "Use small icons" option) for the first time in forever because it was a little difficult to accurately get my mouse over the right window. This somewhat defeats the purpose of all that extra room. What's the point of quadrupling the pixels if you also have to increase the size of all the text and windows and everything just to be able to see it?

As for window management, I've installed DisplayFusion which is an application to improve the multi-monitor experience--even though I only have one display connected to my PC right now. It has window management shortcuts and options that help with things, such as hotkeys that move and/or resize windows to certain positions or sizes. It also enables window snapping to the edges of the screen or other windows. I'm currently trialing the "Pro" version of DisplayFusion and I like it enough that I will probably buy it after my trial ends.

Sure, a lot of my previous posts about the TV were extolling its virtues, but to be honest, there are some fairly significant downsides to the TV as well. Some of them may be due to this particular model of TV I'm using (such as the 30Hz refresh rate at >1080p resolutions), or the fact that I'm using a TV rather than a display that was designed to be used as a PC monitor.

Some other downsides I haven't mentioned yet:

Because it's a TV, it's not designed to allow the PC to put the display to sleep after a period of time. That is, the display will sleep after some time when there is no signal to display, but it won't automatically wake up again once the PC starts sending a signal. The TV shuts off and I have to press the power button to turn it back on again. It probably takes the TV about 30 seconds or so from pressing the power button before it displays anything (not counting the Seiki splash screen).

This has the added detriment of repositioning my windows because somewhere along this process, it would seem the resolution gets temporarily changed. So all my windows that I had in the lower or right areas of the monitor are squashed up into the upper left section of the screen, and I have to move all my windows back to the positions I want them in. This is made somewhat easier with some custom hotkeys I defined in DisplayFusion, but it's still an annoyance that I have to face every time I come back to my PC after stepping away long enough for the display to shut off. This has caused me to actually enable a screensaver for the first time in years and leave the display on for a couple of hours before finally shutting off. Whereas in the past I'd often make the screen go blank after 5-10 minutes and have the PC actually shut off the display after another 5-10 minutes.

The colors are strange. The brights are really bright and the darks are really dark. I read in some reviews for the monitor that other people were complaining about the colors, they said that after some adjusting/calibrating the colors were fine. But I don't know exactly how to calibrate the colors. I don't have hardware or software for that. I just know that photos of people look... off. Everything looks a little cartoony or washed out or something.

At this point I'm not convinced I'll really like using this display as a PC monitor, especially if I think about having to deal with the annoyances listed in this and previous posts on a daily basis for the next 5+ years. I'm going to give myself a few more days to try to get used to this display, and if I'm still unsure about it, I'll likely return it and look into getting one of these 27" 2560x1440 monitors, which should give me some extra space but also avoid most, if not all, of problems this TV has. This will also bring the cost of the new monitor back down to what I was originally hoping to pay for a 2nd monitor. And it has the added benefit that if I do need to get a new GPU, I can afford to buy both the 27" monitor and a new GPU for about the same price as this TV cost me.

wraith808

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #39 on: May 23, 2014, 05:50 PM »
There's also this one: http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16824238028

I have one of the 24" and I love it... thinking about upgrading to this and making a panorama setup with the two 24" on the sides and this in the middle

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #40 on: May 26, 2014, 01:43 PM »
My previous monitor is 25"-26" (I think it was advertised as 25" when I bought it but the model number (which often indicates the size) includes the numbers 266 in it) at 1920x1200, and I wish I had a little more space, so I'm not sure I'd be satisfied with a larger monitor (27") with a smaller resolution (1920x1080). That's why I'm thinking the 27" 2560x1440 monitors will hit just the right spot.

wraith808

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #41 on: May 26, 2014, 03:31 PM »
My previous monitor is 25"-26" (I think it was advertised as 25" when I bought it but the model number (which often indicates the size) includes the numbers 266 in it) at 1920x1200, and I wish I had a little more space, so I'm not sure I'd be satisfied with a larger monitor (27") with a smaller resolution (1920x1080). That's why I'm thinking the 27" 2560x1440 monitors will hit just the right spot.

Good points.  let me know how your international experience is.  That's been the only thing holding me back from buying from one of those (there are several on ebay)

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #42 on: June 05, 2014, 06:35 PM »
Just thought I'd mention it here officially that I returned the 39" 4K TV. It was just too large and I couldn't concentrate on the task at hand.

I'll most likely buy this one as a 2nd monitor:

X-Star 27" WQHD 2560x1440 Monitor

mouser

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #43 on: June 05, 2014, 06:42 PM »
Good decision.

wraith808

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #44 on: June 05, 2014, 07:01 PM »
How long did it take you to receive the monitor when you ordered it?  I'm seriously thinking about that last one you posted...

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #45 on: June 05, 2014, 08:57 PM »
How long did it take you to receive the monitor when you ordered it?  I'm seriously thinking about that last one you posted...

If you're talking about the 4K Seiki TV, it was ordered on Amazon with free 2-day shipping using Amazon Prime. So it arrived very quickly.

If you're talking about something else, then there must have been a misunderstanding because the only monitor/TV I've purchased in the past couple years was that TV.

xtabber

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #46 on: June 22, 2014, 10:02 AM »
About a month ago, I went from a 24ā€ 1920x1080 monitor to a 27ā€ 2560x1440 monitor. 

While I greatly appreciate the larger work space, I had to increase the default Windows text size from Medium to Larger in order to be able to read much of what is on the screen.  This has made me acutely aware that support for large fonts is really inconsistent in a lot of software.  All too often, text in dialog boxes is cut off or nearly unreadable.  Iā€™d guess this problem would be worse on a 4K monitor.

skwire

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #47 on: June 22, 2014, 11:28 AM »
This has made me acutely aware that support for large fonts is really inconsistent in a lot of software.

Hear hear.  As a programmer, I (and mouser) can attest to this.  In most cases, it's a pain in the ass, programmatically, to deal with.

Deozaan

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #48 on: June 24, 2014, 03:08 AM »
[Disclaimer: I started this post earlier in the day and then got busy away from the PC before I could finish it. So I finished what I was writing and posted it, even though it's been about 16 hours since it was delivered and I haven't had much time with it.]

I just got my 27" 2560x1440 monitor.

I'm still trying to figure out how to position it on my small desk next to my 25" 1920x1200 monitor, but so far I'm liking it.

I was worried about ordering it off eBay from a Korean seller. Worried it might be a piece of junk, or that it would be damaged, or have tons of dead pixels, or that if I had to return it due to defectiveness it would cost an arm and a leg for shipping, etc., but the seller had a very high rating and I searched through the customer feedback for the monitor and all but one were good feedback. So I took a chance on it.

I'm happy to report that shipping was really fast (it came from Korea faster than some items I ordered from elsewhere in the USA from Amazon!) and there are no dead pixels and the image quality seems to pretty good. It's at least superior to my old monitor as far as brightness, contrast, viewing angles, etc. go.

I would definitely recommend it for a single monitor setup.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle the dual-monitor setup. To get it to fit on my desk I've turned my old monitor at an angle and pushed the new monitor a lot farther back than my old one used to be. This means that in addition to the higher resolution (which means smaller looking text) it's also far enough away from me that my myopia affects how well I can see it. This means I will likely have to wear my glasses while at my desk, and they tend to give me a headache after a while. But who knows. Maybe my next big purchase will be some LASIK surgery to fix my vision and that will no longer be an issue. If it wasn't for the vision issue, I think I'm already at a point where I like it enough to say that I would wholeheartedly recommend it in a dual-monitor setup. Heck, two of them would be pretty cool side by side! (c:

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?
« Reply #49 on: June 24, 2014, 03:27 AM »
I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle the dual-monitor setup.

Mostly driven by life circumstances, I have moved away from the dual monitor setup in favor of that incredibly under-rated type of software called Desktop Splitters, and my signature one I use is from that obscure one from here called TranDesk *Not a Nany* but actually from some kind of C+ test.

The point is, the big gain of a dual monitor is how you get a second field of view. But what if you an have *four* views, just a click away!? The fourth one I use for low level utilities like the Task Manager and the master archive of Stickies and a couple other things. So that leaves three. But I am bit prone lately to info overload. So what if you have seven sets of browser windows with five tabs each, and a couple other things going, then you want to start fresh? Just click to a new desktop split!

All that important stuff from tab 1 is saved, then you get a fresh slate to work on. And then when you overload that one, you get a third.

To me all it takes is one good monitor. I am currently on a (dying) 24" but it's a bit of a push that 27" could be better, sure, once you get used to it.

I am just suggesting that for fellas who don't have the money to get whole new hardware, those desktops splitters are incredibly under-rated.