Previously the highest res I've ever had on a Windows system was 1400x1050 on my notebook - but that made sense on a 15" notebook screen. I've just pinched a 22" of someone who's left the company (they had me on a 15" until my new system comes - try using that with eclipse), and it's the first time I've ever used such a high res on Windows. Though I've had tons of real-estate, that's always been using two monitors (typically 1400*1050 + 1280x1024)

I dunno how you do it. It just, to me, Windows doesn't seem suited to it. I mean really there's no need for 1680px wide for a browser, so you have to manage window sizes (thanks, GridView). Given that Windows edges are size-edges, not drag-edges like in Mac OSX which I've been using for the last 18-24mo on a similar iMac screen and 15" MBP (1440x900), it just doesn't seem to work as well as I thought it would. It's fine for eclipse, of course.

The main thing this got me thinking of is how I'll go with the new system I plan to buy next month (quad core, GTX260, 24"@1920x1200) - though the new nVidia drivers I hear have features to support display splitting.

Anyone have any tips for dealing with such massive work spaces/resolutions that seem to have become the norm in recent years?

On a slightly unrelated note, not having expose sucks donkeys.

widescreen monitors for anything other than videos/gaming sucks in windows

i dunno what your on about... 1680X1050 on a 22" widescreen lcd is lush. for cad it's the awesomeness!@#!$ just resize stuff for optimal viewability/useability. that's what i use at home... no 2nd monitor. i don't usually run browser windows maximised... tho that's just a personal preference.

at work i use a 24" widescreen @ 1920x1200 (also awesomeness) with a 21" crt as the 2nd monitor.... & i still wish i had more real estate :P

i'd rather twin 17"'s than one 22". Very similar height and width, but with the 17"'s you have the ability to fullscreen snap to two areas.

While we're on the topic of laying stuff out, I've found allSnap to be a lifesaver.

allSnap is a small system tray app that makes all top level windows automatically align like they do in programs such as Winamp or Photoshop.

I figured someone might find this useful. Demonstration:

to each thier own, but why you'd rather run smaller monitors at lower res just to have 2 fullscreen snaps duzzn't make sense to me... i'd rather have maximum resolution, maximum real estate.

i don't really get the reason to make windows snap or aligh perfectly either :/ as long as the useful part of the program is exposed for use, s'all good imo. i like messyness.... mmm so messy.


last edited by demon at 13:52:12 08/Jul/08

i run 1680x1050 and absolutely love it. wouldnt b able to use anything less ever again.

Very nice, but I'd rather have that function only work when I hold down the Ctrl key, instead of not working when I hold down Alt.

cant u get snap programs?

How is running Windows in widescreen any different to any other OS in widescreen? I have 2 monitors (22" @ 1680x1050 + 19" @ 1280x1024), and I by no means feel like I've got "too much" screen real estate. I don't see what your issue is.

Too big is bad? I don't geddit..

Whenever I setup a new 19-22 inch monitor for a customer and of course put it in its native res, the user always complains that the writing is too small and they make me change it, i try to explain to them that there is no point getting a big monitor if you are just going to run it in a smaller monitor res (yes i know the picture will be bigger, but what actualy benefits has it given you)

I come back a week later and some people have even changed it to 1024x768 (on a bloddy 19in widescreen monitor ffs) which I again explain to them that it isnt a widescreen resolution and its just stretcing everything, but they dont beleive me and try to tell me that when i put it in a widescreen res that everything looks stretched then.

They should make monitors locked into its native res, and when you put it on a lower res it just uses exactly that many pixels on the monitor, that'd show the stupid users.

i run 22" at home and two smaller monitors at work

i do admit in a work environment, its way more uesful with two smaller monitors

i wish i could rotate my work monitor and work with it at 90's so that pieces of paper would fit the screen nicely at 100%

At work, I run a 24" @ 1900x1200 and a 17" @ 1280x1024, and I use the whole lot. With applications like Maya and Photoshop, the more room I have, the better. There are programmers here with 2 24" monitors each. I don't know why.

Yeah I wish that widescreen wasn't the industry norm. Sadly the change has been made. Possibly because there's less pixels in a 20" widescreen monitor than there is in a 20" 4:3

i'd rather twin 17"'s than one 22"

Meh...I run 2x 22" at home and 2x 19" at work. I love the real estate. Really depends on if you know how to use it properly or actually HAVE a need for it. If you do...it is a god send.

1680x1050 is my fav gaming resolution. everything looks crisp and lush while still keeping good frames.

1920x1200 for normal windows stuff is win. i got 24" dell cranking dualview with 52" bravia at this rez. no such thing as too much monitor

have been running 22" at 1680x1050 at home, in win XP

visual studio loves it

a web page takes up as much space as it's given. unless its ausgamers.com

Ok all, I just happen to be looking at buying a new monitor today, and am looking at a 22". I have read that 90% of 22" monitors use a 6 bit TN panel that gives crappy colours, and only handles around 200k colours natively, then dithers up to 16.2 million colours. I have read they are much more responsive than the 8 bit panels used in most 24" screens though.

I am interested in the 22" cause of the lower res (don't think current / future games will run happily at 1920x1200 on current pc's).

Can you guys please give recommendations on your purchasing and usage experiences wrt gaming.

Cheers.

Too big is bad? I don't geddit..

It's a complaint I get from time to time.

I am interested in the 22" cause of the lower res (don't think current / future games will run happily at 1920x1200 on current pc's)

Pretty much irrelevant as both nvidia and ati can scale resolutions in driver up to your native res.

^ haha

I don't understand this thread though. I've always liked more resolutionage. I actually miss 1920x1200 for Visual Studio on my current 1680x1050 x 2 setup.

Bah,

The monitor will also upscale. How is having the vid card do it any better than that?

You would have to agree that any scaling at all (panel or vid card) will look worse than running in native res.

No i wouldn't have to agree with that at all.

I actually had someone tell me he prefers 1024x768 on a 14" 4:3 notebook screen to 1280x768 on a 14" wide panel today...

I nearly choked. I can hardly stand 1280x768!

I pretty much agree with Raven; I got my first widescreen monitor at home a couple months ago and it doesn't do x1200 - I find myself completely lost and confused trying to organise everything. It's great quality but I just can't adapt to having a single monitor w/ that resolution for some reason.

Ok Bah, please explain how a scaled resolution can possibly look better than or as good as running at the panel's native res. I have never heard this argued before.

i use macs at work, pc at home,

as an expose substitute, i have my taskbar on the right hand side of the screen, quite wide so i can read all the names of the programs and set to auto hide. that way you get max screen real estate and a similar function to expose: scroll your mouse over to the side and viola, you have access to all your running programs and the quicklaunch icons. so i guess it almost works as a dissapearing dock aswell.

pft.. i got a 26" 1900 or something. love it. how can you complain?

there's only 1 thing better then a 22" widescreen 1680x1050... and that's 2 of them with dual display:D

<3 using 3ds max 1 screen, photoshop the other

I've got a 28" and 32" hooked up to my machine and it f***ing rocks extremely hard. Especially using s*** like photoshop you can just slide massive pics between the two without having to scroll around the screen. Dunno why the f*** you'd want anything smaller than 22".

Ok Bah, please explain how a scaled resolution can possibly look better than or as good as running at the panel's native res.

"better" is subjective, i'd rather a larger monitor with a scaled res that only some completely anal c***s would notice the difference, rather than a smaller monitor with a smaller res running native.

The monitor will also upscale. How is having the vid card do it any better than that?

Some monitors upscale poorly and overscan an image, cutting off the edges

I'm looking at getting either a..
BenQ V2400W or G2400W
OR
Dell 2408wfp A01

Can't decide

I pretty much agree with Raven; I got my first widescreen monitor at home a couple months ago and it doesn't do x1200 - I find myself completely lost and confused trying to organise everything. It's great quality but I just can't adapt to having a single monitor w/ that resolution for some reason.

You used to be cool trog..

I can vouch the BenQ G2200W 22", no complaints here and the price is great.

As for dual screens, I don't like dragging applications from one screen to the other all the time. You can only really focus on 1 screen at a time, so I found alt-tab to be faster and more practical. My main application is putty though. So I made my putty default pixel size a perfect half of my screen and run 2 side by side, and alt-tab if I needed to have a few more open.

I think web browsing is nicer widescreen. Videos and gaming are better for sure. Only gripe with the 22inch widescreens is games, you need a beasty PC run games natively. I used to run a 19inch widescreen at 1440x900 purely for the extra FPS I could get natively.

I have read that 90% of 22" monitors use a 6 bit TN panel that gives crappy colours, and only handles around 200k colours natively, then dithers up to 16.2 million colours.

i guess whether they're "crappy" depends upon the effectiveness of the dithering technique. looking at those gradient tests i can't see any of the dithering artefacts i'm supposed to be seeing - i'm no colour aficionado though

22" lcd (LG L226WTQ)

My Samsung 172X is a 6-bit panel, and I know what you mean about the colors and dithering. But other than that it's an unbelievably good LCD, it'd be what 5 years old? Never had a problem with it anyway. Course, I'd expect that of a monitor that was $800 when at the time most others were $400.

Dell 27" - $999. Mmmmmm.

It's great quality but I just can't adapt to having a single monitor w/ that resolution for some reason.

You've changed man...you've changed.

I have twin 22s at 1680x1050. I have Ultramon for Vista and it's a dream. It's f***ing awesome for watching a DVD while still being able to browse and chat, with everything viewable at the same time. I also have enough space to use google sidebar, which is pretty handy.

I watch movies on my LCD tv, which I guess is technically a dual screen set up, but it's only on when I wanna watch porn^M^M^M^M movies

porn^M^M^M^M

Why does the word 'porn' get you so excited that you end up repeatedly hitting the enter key?

hahaha ^H^H^H^H smartarse

&#66;&#76;&#79;&#87;&#77;&#69;&nbsp;&#59;&#41;

& #5 8;& # 80

meehhhh im laaaame :)

yay for my 17 inch oh it sucks hearing about 32 inch screens and even 22 inch

The people having trouble just need to step away from the maximize button and learn to manage windows manually.

Also, a dual (or more) setup is great. I haven't personally used a single widescreen, but I imagine two non-wides might be better at providing a kind of logical separation.

Also also, DELL FTW. This old new 19in HP I have sitting next to my DELL 17 is bigger and uglier. Really washed out by comparison. It doesn't help that it is the same res but larger and goofier. So if you get two monitors, try and get the same type.

2560x1600 ftw.

I love my Dell 17inch widescreen laptop, native res 1900x1200. Anything else looks f***ing HUGE.
It's completely ruined me for work though, i have a 17inch widescreen monitor at 1440x and its too big.

I find having a widescreen and a normal screen as a dual setup is awesome, i can have wide excel files on the wide screen, and long documents on the normal screen.

I must say that my 22" likewise monitor seems more suited to Mac desktop apps than windows desktop apps. Maybe its coz mac doesnt really have a 'maximize' so to speak and things just sorta float around.

That being said, i love how >2 month old threads are always revived by 2 post newbies....

Rules
* Don't revive old threads. That is, don't go searching for old threads and post in them just to bump them.

last edited by 3dee at 17:09:52 07/Sep/08

I'm with decayingcorpse. 2560x1600 is nice. TF2 is damn sexy at that res, only just over 100fps in action though, 300 when its quiet.

one word "spaces"
learn it, use it, desktop space hardly seems necessary once you do (within reason).

If you play TF2 with the framerate bouncing between 100fps and 300fps on an LCD you're a human tragedy

I fukken love stressing my videocard to render frames i cant see and producing tearing in those I can *woots*

Your eyes must be better than mine...

*fist pounds*

I'm with decayingcorpse. 2560x1600 is nice. TF2 is damn sexy at that res, only just over 100fps in action though, 300 when its quiet.

nothing like a good dell 30.

Best investment ever.

BenQ V2400W

Horrible, horrible bloody horrible monitors. They develop leans after a while.

i wish i could rotate my work monitor and work with it at 90's so that pieces of paper would fit the screen nicely at 100%

win, i now do this, rotated screen is awesome (most of the time)

Since this thread has been revived I might as well post again.

I bought a BenQ 22" a couple of weeks back to go on my s***ty second comp. I'm running Vista, 8800GT, 4gig RAM and a 3gig dual core and WoW looks like ass on it compared to my main one with a 28" Viewsonic which looks lovely.

I will never buy a BenQ ever again after seeing this.

It's a complaint I get from time to time.

I see what you did there. but the answer is that he's sexually insecure and when all of a sudden theres too much space he freaks out. In other words he's gay.

widescreen monitors for anything other than videos/gaming sucks in windows

I prefer 4:3 for gaming

16:10 is pretty lame tho. Movies (and the xbox360) are 16:9.

Way to standardize not having standards.

hah, yeah because all movies are shot in 16:9

... except the ones shot in 2.39:1

well done special individuals ...
Correct ... Movies are shot in other formats

But the ones I am likely to play on a HTPC/xbox/pc are 16:9 ie. 720p 1080i, 1080p (Given we are talking about monitors it seems a logical assumption that we wouldn't be talking about what you see in a cinema)

But if anything it shows how stupid the "standards" are. 1.85 ... 2.39 ... (so many different film standards)
We have cameras here at work that will even do 1:1 oO

Movies are rarely 16x9, but usually the aspect ratio of the DVD is 16x9 (but contains added black bars).

Why 1.78:1 (16:9)?

When the 1.78:1 aspect ratio was proposed by Kerns H. Powers, nobody was creating 16:9 video. The popular choices in 1980 were 1.33, 1.67, 1.85, 2.20 and 2.35. Powers discovered that all of those aspects would fit within a 1.78:1 outer rectangle and when over-lapped, all shared a common 1.78:1 inner rectangle. Hence, any of the "common 5" can be neatly cropped or matted to fill a 16:9 screen.

P.S. No similar article found called "Why 16:10 ?"

But the ones I am likely to play on a HTPC/xbox/pc are 16:9 ie. 720p 1080i, 1080p (Given we ar talking about monitors it seems a logical assumption that we wouldn't be talking about what you see in a cinema)

actually, most dvds / bluray etc aren't in 16:9 as it upsets the purists. only tv is 16:9.

must get tiring being wrong all the time.

Lotta idiots in this thread. The human field of vision is significantly closer to 16:10 than 4:3 so unless you have issues with motion sickness in FPSs or something it's time to upgrade to widescreen, no matter the application. Owned bitches.

plus most anime is in 16:9

what are u bitching about? windows looks fine on my 26" (1900x something)

I bought a BenQ 22" a couple of weeks back to go on my s***ty second comp. I'm running Vista, 8800GT, 4gig RAM and a 3gig dual core and WoW looks like ass on it compared to my main one with a 28" Viewsonic which looks lovely.

Looks like ass in what way?

If it's the FP222W, then it's understandable. The specs of it are getting outdated and is somewhat salvageable if you play around with the monitor settings.

Though in the end, you can't seriously expect a cheap 22" to produce the same quality of a larger panel.

Lotta idiots in this thread. The human field of vision is significantly closer to 16:10 than 4:3 so unless you have issues with motion sickness in FPSs or something it's time to upgrade to widescreen, no matter the application. Owned bitches.

WE HAVE A NEW HUNTER!