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Like jfb says, different strokes. I use multiple 30" monitors on my two workstations and I would prefer a single 50" display. My wife's Seiki has more raw pix

• seiji 13y ago
  they have been effectively fixed That's a big part of the preference dynamic too. The price per resolution got stuck and didn't budge above 27" for years. Hopefully one day I'll be happy with four 50" 8K screens.
• rschmitty 13y ago
  I hear you on the bezels, however I like the wrap around effect multiple portrait monitors give over 1 big flat monitor Curved high dpi 50" please!
  • bhauer 13y ago
    > Curved high dpi 50" please! Exactly! If I could have all my wish-list items in desktop computing, it would include a large, concave, high-DPI, OLED display with mouse and gesture input.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    I don't get the whole "curved" thing. I quite enjoyed getting rid of "curved" displays with the switch to LCDs.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      The "curved" that we got rid of was convex CRTs. The "curved" people want is concave screens so that, at the optimal viewing point, all points on the screen are equidistant for the viewer (people with multimonitor setups often approximate this by angling some of the monitors, but concave monitors would avoid the need for this.) The idea is convex < flat < concave.
• PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  > When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? I've only met a few people who are of that particular disposition, and I personally consider them odd. It's a weird self-flagellation or quasi-Luddism. Not at all. It's practicality. Close enough to read normal-sized text clearly, and the edges fade into peripheral vision; far enough that I can see the whole thing at a glance, and I start having to zoom to read. I'd use one if it was the only monitor available, but I'd prefer a 24". If it works for you, that's nice. I'm not calling you a freak of nature, so please don't call me a self-flagellating Luddite.
  • bhauer 13y ago
    Very well. I'm only describing the people I know first-hand whom have said they are perfectly happy with small monitors. They are the same people who previously told me that TN LCDs were perfectly fine, and were content with convex CRTs before that. They didn't understand why I would complain about the low density iPad 2 LCD and didn't appreciate the appeal of high-DPI until they had a iPad 3 (or similar) in their hand. I am emphatically against the notion of "good enough," and those whom I personally have heard express confusion about the appeal of large monitors have routinely described various technology levels as "good enough." I don't mean to suggest that everyone who would refuse a large display is definitively a Luddite. Furthermore, I am abusing the definition of Luddite here to mean someone who is satisfied with the status quo. That said, I cannot relate to the appeal of small monitors whatsoever. It would frustrate me greatly to use a 24" LCD for a whole day of work. All the alt-tabbing, control-tabbing, the loss of context, and window shuffling would get old, quick. Incidentally, for me, I'd have to sit very close to a 24" LCD to have its edges fade into peripheral vision. I like having my monitors about 2.5 to 3 feet from my eyes. A monitor would need to be 50" or larger for its edges to fade into peripheral vision at ~3 feet. Something else I really enjoy about large monitors is the ability to zoom in and then sit back further (4 or 5 feet) and relax. I like the flexibility of varying the viewing distance nicely between 1.5 to 5 feet by leaning in or leaning back depending on use-case and my feeling at the moment.
    • topbanana 13y ago
• jfb 13y ago
  I think current interfaces would fall over in a truly immersive environment; I find it too damn hard to keep track of all my windows and modals and popups and shit with 2x27"; if I was offered tomorrow a 65", 400ppi screen, I'd have a hard time setting up my work environment to match. Given that I'm not terribly happy about vast screen resolution with existing software, I'd much prefer smaller, higher-PQ, super-high density screens while we as an industry figure out how to make immersive displays usable. Just MHO, of course.
  • bhauer 13y ago
    You are right, of course. Current interfaces are not well suited to high-DPI large form-factor displays. But if we wait for interfaces to happen first, I worry the wait will be prolonged. Plus, if you gave me a 65" 400 DPI screen today, I would drop everything and immediately put it to use. I would set it up on a drafting-style standing desk and would enjoy extremely high-clarity text throughout my desktop user interface. I would hand-craft the desk myself and I'd shower you with thanks and praise. The point being, I want to be an early adopter and hopefully there would be enough of us for the UI designers to eventually target our demographic. Right now, so much UI R&D is on small form-factor that it's a little heart-breaking to someone like myself who spends 8 hours a day working at a desktop. Science-fiction movies routinely taunt us with immersive desktop computing and we're just barely moving the needle in that direction.
    • jfb 13y ago
      I'd drop everything for a 65" 400ppi display, of course, but I'd take a 24" 400ppi over a 65" 200ppi without even thinking about it.
      • bhauer 13y ago
        I'll take both, several of each!
      • jules 13y ago
        Why? Just position the 65" one twice as far away and you have effectively the same pixel density with a bigger effective viewing area and less eye strain.
• kayoone 13y ago
  Single High DPI 50" screen all the way! I hate the bezels between my monitors and the low DPI. With a monitor like that you could move not important stuff more to the top ("like logging output") and have the development tools/browser in the lower area, cant wait :) Regarding the raw pixel, a typical 30" has 4.1M pixels, so two have 8.2M pixels and the Seiki has 8.3M which is hardly a difference, your point still stands though.
• porker 13y ago
  > When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? Yes. There are a few issues at play: 1. I want more screen space so I want a bigger monitor 2. My desk has a finite depth. For better posture the monitor should be far enough away that I don't need to move my head to see from a corner to any other corner Multi-monitor set ups are probably worse, my physio sees a number of ppl who use them. But any big screen will have the same effect, encouraging neck and spinal issues. I'm curious - if you need to put a big monitor further away and increase the font size to keep it legible, don't you lose most of the benefits of "bigger screen area" and gain only crisp rendering and clarity?
  • bhauer 13y ago
    Your physiological perspective makes sense. I don't know a whole lot about posture and physiology. For my multiple 30" monitors, I keep them each about 3 feet from my eyes, more than an arm's length away. I suppose I have been blessed with fairly good eyesight because I don't zoom the view, instead keeping everything at 100% for most day-to-day usage. If I'm feeling like I want to relax, I'll zoom things in and recline a bit. I guess from my layperson perspective, I'd much rather move my eyes and head than deal with the contextual and organizational problems I would face by having to deal with a window stack. I'd rather not have to throw my left hand over to the tab key or have to reach for my mouse to shuffle some windows. I've used a multi-monitor configuration with the largest monitors I could afford for over a decade now and don't yet feel this has affected my physiology. But maybe I have a silent killer sneaking up on me? If you did need to zoom in to keep text legible for eyesight reasons, I'm not sure if the value would be as pronounced. But yes, I do think the clarity and crispness would be compelling enough for me. I've routinely said that if I rest my 300+ DPI cell phone on the surface of one of my Dell 30" U3011 monitors and look at both that and my monitor's display at the same distance (roughly 3 feet), the cell phone looks shockingly more legible and superior in just about every way. I so want to just tug at the edges of my cell phone's screen and make its screen big enough to fill my entire desk surface.
• __david__ 13y ago
  > When you say you know people who can't handle a 30" monitor, do you mean that? They would refuse to use a 30" even if they were given one? I've only met a few people who are of that particular disposition, and I personally consider them odd. It's a weird self-flagellation or quasi-Luddism. The last computer monitor I bought was the original 24" Apple Cinema Display. I haven't used it for day to day computing in 7 years or so. The reason for that is because I bought a laptop. For the first year or so I plugged the laptop into the display but as I bought newer and newer laptops the difference in resolution got smaller. My current laptop's high DPI screen has almost quadruple the number of pixels as that display. So, there are 2 reasons that I've not bought a large display. 1) I don't want to need it. If I get hooked on a large display, then I've killed the fundamental utility of the laptop—to be productive anywhere. If I suddenly need a 30" screen to feel as productive as "normal" then my laptop is useless to me. A tethered laptop is not portable any more. I really enjoy the freedom to work on my couch, in an office, coffee shop, or on a whim, out in the backyard on a nice day, without ever feeling like I'm compromised. 2) The current batch of 30" displays are not high DPI. Compared to my latop screen they look pixelated and downright primitive. That seems to be changing with these announced screens and I'm happy about that. Also, there's technically a #3, which is that anything larger than my 24" monitor will not fit on the desk that I have (it has a self that isn't adjustable or removable). But that's kind of a weak reason and I could probably fix it if I really cared.
  • bhauer 13y ago
    I don't mean to criticize anything about your line of thinking because it sounds like you're doing what makes sense to you and you're happy. So who am I to tell you you're wrong? However, I do feel that your description hints at the essence of what I was saying earlier: that avoiding a large monitor is somewhat like self-deprivation. You don't want to get spoiled by becoming accustomed to the increased productivity yielded by a large monitor with a large virtual desktop. You're a mobile worker, so that makes a lot of sense. I do most of my work at either my office or at home. So I have two modestly-powerful workstations with lots of monitors at each location (in total, I've spent about twice as much as I would have to buy a high-end laptop). Because I am not a mobile worker, I have a particularly small laptop (a Surface Pro). I feel crippled when I try to do serious work on my laptop because the screen is so tiny and there's so much context hidden by windows stacked on one another. In a further-out future, I hope that laptops (or whatever portable device we carry) can one day project a very large, very high-DPI display of their own, giving you and me the best of both worlds. If I read you correctly, you'd love to have the increased productivity of a larger virtual workspace, but today's technology and your need to be mobile keep you thinking it's best to focus on mobility first. That makes a lot of sense. I totally agree that the current batch of 30" displays are disappointingly low-resolution. So much agreement on that! Primitive, stale technology, stagnant for 8 years. But I think I've already said enough about that in this thread. :)