Holy Screen Space...

[Peter Korsten]

Martin Naef schreef:

> Interesting - I'd never consider more screen real estate a hindrance. 
> Certainly not until we get to the range beyond a meter width or so when 
> it might become difficult for the eyes to focus on any part of the 
> screen. At work, I'm using a 24" wide screen and another 19" - and yes, 
> I'd take more any day. I *always* have several applications open at any 
> time, and switching between them feels a lot more natural when they stay 
> put on the screen and not disappear behind another window.

I suppose it's mostly from a Peter point of view, that larger than 22" 
or 24" would work against me. As you may remember, my eyes aren't very 
good, and now that I'm approaching 40, I don't want to stay re-focussing 
all the time either.

Put it this way: the 22" is about 50 cm from my face, and I can fit two 
80x60 Unix terminal next to one another. (Incidentally, using the 
mouse's scroll wheel in 'vi' comes in *very* handy.) Already, I have to 
turn my head to focus on one or the other.

I use the keyboard a lot: the mouse mostly for scrolling, but switching 
applications I do with the keyboard. Sometimes I have to go back to the 
mouse, due to the somewhat stupid way that Windows decides what Alt-Tab 
should do, but what I'm trying to say is that I don't need to move my 
head to see what I'm typing, or to grab the mouse (which is a blue or 
green lighting presence in the corner of my eye). So getting anything 
bigger than 24" might not work for me, because all I deal with is text, 
and I'm only looking at one -small- thing at the time.

> At home, I'm at 20" with 1600x1200 resolution, and there's no way I'd go 
> any lower than that.

I'd sorely want to exchange the 1280x960 17" CRT for a 1920x1200 24" 
wide screen TFT, but you know, budget constraints...

- Peter