I’ve always been a hound for more resolution in my monitors. It goes all the way back to when I was first running Windows 3.0 and I had a monitor capable of 800x600 resolution. Everyone I worked with thought that I was nuts looking at the tiny text on the 800x600 resolution. 640x480 was just fine with them. Then I switched to 1024x768. What a dream that was. Look at all the space on the 14” screen. Everyone I worked with was till using 800x600 (a couple insisted on 640x480). Fast Forward a few years and I was using a single monitor at 1280x1024 and thought it was the greatest. Then came this operating system called NT and I heard that you could put 2 video cards in it and have 2 monitors at the same time. I ran out to the nearest store and bought a video card to put in my work machine. It took a little while to work out the quirks but then I had a 2 monitor setup. I was hooked. Since that time I’ve been preaching about how developers need more than one monitor. I’ve convinced many a person to try 2 monitor setups and almost all have loved it (there’s always one or two who insist they like 1 monitor better. I usually call them grandparents.).
My system right now is using a 2 monitor setup with a Dell 2405FPW 24” widescreen (1920x1200) as main main monitor and a Dell 2001FP 20” (1600x1200) as my second monitor. They actually match very well together. The screen height is fairly close and more importantly the resolution height (1200) matches for both monitors. This means I have an effective resolution of 3520x1200 or almost 4.25 million pixels. I love it. The mismatched resolutions does have some interesting side effects but the excellent UltraMon (don’t run multi monitor without it) handles things nicely.
The thing that prompted this post was an announcement from Dell at CES today. They announced a new 22” widescreen (E228WFP, 1680x1050) monitor. The shocking thing is the MSRP of only $329. Right now on the Dell Home & Small Office site it is selling for only $296. To put this price in perspective, when I bought the Dell 2001FP about 2.5 years ago I was waiting for it to come down to under $700 to my door (I got it to my door for something like $699.75). I’ve had the 2405FPW for about 6 months and it was around $800 (it’s current about $675). That means that 2 of the new monitors can be had for less than what I paid for the single 20” 2.5 years ago or the 24” 6 months ago. Doing the math, that’s over 3.5 million pixels for less than the cost of one of my monitors. I think I need to start prompting(bullying) more people to switch to big, dual, widescreens.
There is an excellent comparison of resolution standards in Wikipedia here.
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