I like Big Screens and I cannot lie

Ok, excuse that bad Sir Mix-A-Lot pun in the title. Anyway, today I've upgraded my Monitor. Previously, I had a single 15.4" Flat Screen with a resolution of 1280x800. That is nice, but when working with Visual Studio or Cinema 4D, it gets a little bit fiddly.

So I've now added a 24" 1920x1200 Pixel Monitor to my existing one. Apart from the obvious advantage of having 1.3 Million additional Pixels compared to the previous one, it also allows me to have a Dual-Monitor setup. Now, be warned: A 24" Monitor is HUGE. In the shop, they all look so small when they are placed in the big open space along with other >20" Screens but at home you get to learn it's real size. Also, 1920x1200 is a resolution where Fonts and screen Elements are rather small. Do not even think about turning on Large Fonts though, Windows is really bad at scaling and instead of properly scaling all UI Elements, it will just increase the font size, thus causing more destruction to the UI than they help. And of course, buying a screen to get a bigger resolution only to size it down then does not make sense.

I also want to thank Jeff Atwood here. His Article about LCD Monitor arms contains a real sweet picture of his setup, and I envy him for having the space to put these Monitors 🙂

The Monitor of my choice is the Philips 240BW8. To be fair, the main reason was it's 350 € price tag compared to the 450+ € of other monitors. Ah yes, add a few Euro for a DVI Cable because it only comes with a VGA Cable. Dear Monitor manufacturers: People who connect a 1920x1200 Pixel Screen with a VGA Cable should be shot and companies to deliver a VGA Cable with such a screen should share a similar faith. Anyway, back to the screen. One nice feature is that the screen includes Speakers that are actually better than expected. They have (limited) bass and are loud enough for my office. You couldn't run a party with them, but compared to a lot other speakers in monitors, they are good enough. The screen is also properly adjustable: Move it up/down, tilt it sideways or turn it by 90° ("Pivot").

It's also suitable for games, and when playing on such a screen you realize that this is how gaming is supposed to be. Unreal Tournament on such a screen is pure glory. Only downside: For 1920x1200 you would need a really high-end PC (My Athlon 64 X2 4200+ w/ Geforce 7900 GTX is not quite cutting the edge anymore 🙂 ) or you have to reduce the resolution and live with interpolation. Luckily, interpolation in games is usually not such a big quality issue.

Yes, it takes up a lot of space, but I am happy with my new screen and I would never go back to a 1 Monitor as long as I can avoid it.