Anyone Use Dual Monitors...

If so how do you set up your work station? I'm looking to set up two 19'' CRTs. Having a hard time finding a good desk with space for two monitors (without braking the bank). Maybe someone could post a picture?
TIA
-M-

Martin McLean said:

If so how do you set up your work station? I

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I use a 19" and a 22" CRT on an old basic desk with a flat 4'x2' top with the monitors pushed back and my keyboard and tablet in front of it. Nothing fancy, but you may need to pull your desk back from the wall to do it. My desk is set up facing out with my back to the wall while seated. My chairs height is set to minimize stress on my wrists and not for leg comfort (though my legs are comfy).

Spacewise, LCDs would be nice, but I am not downgrading to an LCD (once CRT's got cheap to make at first tier quality they stopped making them) until a monitor dies.

As to productivity, two displays is much more efficient for getting work done. Working on a single screen reduces my productivity by 30-40%.

Thanks for sharing Sean. Thats just the feedback I was looking for.

If I had a thousand dollars to put down for a desk, I would have bought a much nicer monitor and still been looking for a cheap desk.

Happy Shooting,

-M-

P.S. I agree about the CRTs. Thats why I went and bought a NEC FE991SB 19". May still get the
NEC FE2111SB 21" before they are all gone. Maybe by the time I need to upgrade, LCDs will be within my price range.

Well .. I don't have a photograph..

but I do have a 3D scene I made in a program called 3D studio Max

I use two 21" viewsonic monitors side by side. Twin towers, so I can switch from one computer to the other using "switches"

This is not a photograph!



using one monitor is too old fashioned

I explain it this way.., NOBODY.., uses a desk that is as big as THE ONE SHEET OF PAPER.. they are workng with.

you need space to move things around and arrange, tools, palettes, etc.

Here comes clutter ;-)

My very "clean" desk with 2x Dell 2005 FPW monitors (1680 x 1050 each). I work with dual monitors for some 4 years now, started by using 2x21" IIyama CRT monitors (sorry, no pictures). Now I would not dream of not having a dual monitor setup, except maybe for one of those new 30" monitors with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 ;-).



Cheers,

I use two computers, one for photo work (the NEC 20" monitor and the upper keyboard/mouse) and the other for everything else. The keyboard trays & monitor stand are fairly standard stuff found at Office Depot, probably Fellowes or something like that.


Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Cem Usakligil said:

Now I would not dream of not having a dual monitor setup, except maybe for one of those new 30" monitors with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 ;-).

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How strange Cem. I dream of giving up on dual displays periodically. A third display would be quite useful at times. And a fourth would enter the realm of reasonable once you have the third. Albeit, going back to just one would (even a 30") would hurt productivity and wasting time and money (widescreens are a scam to sell you smaller monitors with a larger size measurement*).

some thoughts,

Sean

*As the aspect ration moves away from unity the number of pixels on a 20" screen decrease. A 4x3 aspect ratio 20" display has a physically larger area than a 20" 16x9 aspect ratio display. i.e,

1680x1050 = 1.764 MP
1600x1200 = 1.920 MP

A 16x9 display of the same "size" literally is an 11% smaller display than the same "size" 4x3 aspect ratio display. And corporations love nothing more than being able to shaft you (11% reduction in material costs for them while claiming they are still giving you the same size plus a "new and improved" aspect ratio for more money than the older more expensive to make 4x3 aspect ratio display).

Sean DeMerchant said:

How strange Cem. I dream of giving up on dual displays periodically. A third display would be quite useful at times. And a fourth would enter the realm of reasonable once you have the third. Albeit, going back to just one would (even a 30") would hurt productivity and wasting time and money (widescreens are a scam to sell you smaller monitors with a larger size measurement*)....

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Hi Sean,

I understand where you're coming from. The reason why I think about getting the 30" monitor with a 2560x1600 resolution is due to the fact that it offers actually more pixels: i.e. 2560x1600 > 2x1680x1050.

On top of that, many badly written programs play havoc re. screen placement and sub-windows when used under dual-monitor setups, it is a pita sometimes. Also, I occasionally suffer from the bugs in the nVidia drivers and the infamous Desktop Manager. This explains why I might consider "down/upgrading" to a single monitor 30" situation someday (budgets permitting that is ;-)).

Cheers,

I have two screens side by side, but one is from a G4 and the other a dual G5, using a 15" Mac LCD monitor and 21" Eizo display.

I use the G4 for email and writing while the G5 processes.


I've may add a small 2cd monitor for the G5 for PS dialog boxes, palettes , IViewMedia Pro etc.

However, I need portrait a lot and landscape a lot. So how do I choose! Perhaps a 30" Apple Display would be helpful if they can rotate.

Ideally it would be a 40" Eizo that rotated!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

....
Ideally it would be a 40" Eizo that rotated!...

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Ideally, it would be an Eizo that has 40" in both directions. Wait! Better yet, ideally it would be an Eizo that can fully display the Adobe RGB space using 16-bits per colour, has a contrast of about 1:20,000, has a visibility of 180 degrees with a screen size of 50" in both directions (say a native resolution of about 5000x5000 pixels) for only $ 999.99!.. LOL!

Cheers,

PS: I'd then probably take two to create a new and improved dual monitor desktop <grin>

Asher Kelman said:

I have two screens side by side, but one is from a G4 and the other a dual G5, using a 15" Mac LCD monitor and 21" Eizo display.

I use the G4 for email and writing while the G5 processes...

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The coolest solution I have seen was 3 displays where the mouse cursor would shift from one display to the next and the signals would be routed to the correct computer (shared desktop across multiple machines).

Cem Usakligil said:

On top of that, many badly written programs play havoc re. screen placement and sub-windows when used under dual-monitor setups, it is a pita sometimes. Also, I occasionally suffer from the bugs in the nVidia drivers and the infamous Desktop Manager. This explains why I might consider "down/upgrading" to a single monitor 30" situation someday (budgets permitting that is ;-)).

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I understand that. Mostly (excepting palette windows) I use each screen for its own application. I want the third display for the second app when using one that handles dual displays.

enjoy your day,

Sean

Sean DeMerchant said:

...I understand that. Mostly (excepting palette windows) I use each screen for its own application. I want the third display for the second app when using one that handles dual displays...

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Hi Sean,

I couldn't agree more!

Also, another very good reason for having 3 monitors is that the dead center of your destop is not split into two (which is sometimes quite disturbing) as in a dual monitor setup ;-).

Cheers,