My new computer monitor arrived late yesterday via FedEx (and, by the way, I’d like to know why our neighborhood seems to be The. Very. Last. Destination. for FedEx deliveries) and I immediately neglected plans to do some much-needed housekeeping in order to get it connected and configured.<\/p>\n
It’s a 24″ Dell* display<\/a>, and it replaces a six year old 19″ NEC that had developed a disturbing…well, I’m not sure what to call it. It’s like someone dribbled liquid down the inside<\/i> of the screen, right in the center of the display. It wasn’t always obvious, but while my mind had learned to ignore it, it was always there. Plus, it was just 19″, and while I’m old enough to remember 13″ monitors (OK, I’m old enough to remember TI Silent 700 terminals; what’s it to you?), nineteen inches no longer seem to go as far as they once did.<\/p>\n I love the new monitor, and that may be an understatement. But here’s the thing: I didn’t anticipate the extent to which I needed to adjust my work processes to accommodate the increased screen real estate. I mean, I knew that on the old monitor I was constantly resizing and moving windows in order to work with the dozen or so applications I need to have open at all times to do my job, but it’s not as easy as I thought to adapt to the extra space.<\/p>\n On the old monitor, I could take in everything on the screen via direct or peripheral vision. On the new one, I have to either shift my eyes or turn my head to see stuff on the edges. And I can’t put everything<\/i> in the middle of the screen. That pretty much defeats the purpose of having a large display.<\/p>\n I had also grown accustomed to having both sides of the screen dedicated to menus in applications like Photoshop, with my work situated in the middle. But it’s now a lot of mousing to move from one side to the other to change tools or settings. I need to come up with a new toolbar workspace to cut down on that.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, these are problems I’m happy to deal with. Being able to put two full-sized documents side-by-side is nothing short of a joy, and I can now actually identify the 60 icons that rest perpetually in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. But, for now anyway, I’m glad I didn’t fork over the extra bucks for a 30″ monitor. After all, sometimes more is too much, something I’ve learned well by observing Congress lately.<\/p>\n *Yes, I know…why is a Mac guy buying a Dell peripheral? For one thing, I haven’t had an Apple monitor since the 80s. I had a 15″ Sony CRT prior to getting the NEC. For the price, I’m not impressed with Apple’s monitors. But, primarily, when I started looking for a new monitor I confess to being completely discombobulated by the plethora of choices, and the disparity of reviews for any given model. I was locked in analysis paralysis until I had a meeting with my pal Darrell, who’s the head creative guy for a local ad agency. He’s also a Mac user, and the last time I was in his office he had a big honkin’ Cinema Display on his desk. But this time, he had a Dell, and I asked him why. He basically said the same thing: for the price, the Dell is a fabulous value, and it was perfectly calibrated right out of the box. I figured that a recommendation from a graphics pro whom I know and respect was better than a thousand anonymous website reviews, and I went home and ordered the same model he had on his desk. Great call, Darrell!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My new computer monitor arrived late yesterday via FedEx (and, by the way, I’d like to know why our neighborhood seems to be The. Very. Last. Destination. for FedEx deliveries) and I immediately neglected plans to do some much-needed housekeeping in order to get it connected and configured. It’s a 24″ Dell* display, and it… Continue reading The Evolution of Resolution (or, Getting A Big Honkin’ Monitor)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-design","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}