15 ms·

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real es

by r0h1n 13y ago

The article lists the "ideal size" for monitors at 50 inches, and the one for TVs at 100+ inches! While I'm sure it's great to have such massive screen real estate (I wanna get a 4K in 2014 too), I can't but help think this is the programmer equivalent of consumers buying needlessly large TVs. I work on a 24" desktop monitor and a 14" laptop one. How is 50" the "ideal size"? Even 39"? At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? Sure, it's great to gave 7 windows side-by-side, but is it that much of a productivity jump from, say, 4 windows or 5 windows? Personally and subjectively, I'd draw the line somewhere around the 28-32" screen size. To sum up, the core argument here seems to be that upgrading to a 39" or 50" monitor is great because (a) it's cheap, and (b) more is always and infinitely better.

hvidgaard 13y ago
I can't argue about a 39" monitor, but having more screen estate boosts productivity for me to the extend that I'm sure that I could use 3 27" over my current 2 24". Avoiding alt+tab means I get my information quicker when I need it from another window, and I get back to the previous context faster. Sometimes I need both but does not have space and is tabbing back and forth.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Sure, but if one were to plot (a) the number of alt-tabs you do in a day, versus (b) screen size in inches...don't you think at some point the delta benefits would start leveling off?
  - Retric 13y ago
    Sure, diminishing returns kick in but monitors are cheap and programmers are expensive. It's the same reason that 16+GB of ram and SSD's are worth it. Not because most people need it but the cost is low enough that the productivity gains need to be minuscule to be worth it. aka Assuming monitors last ~3 years and cost below 2,000$ it takes a tiny difference to be worth it because your not just comparing productivity delta's but also cost delta's. In other words a 2,000$ monitor that improves productivity by 1/20th of 1% than a 1,000$ monitor is clearly worth it over 3 years even if the difference is simply eye strain. 3x (salary + benefits + overhead) * .0005 > 1000$. PS: Another way to look at it is spending an extra 1-2k per year on salary over industry standard rarely tempts programmers but an extra 1-2k per year on hardware might.
    - hvidgaard 13y ago
      That wasn't the best thought out example. The total yearly cost for a programmer would have to exceed 666.666 $ to justify a 1000 $ purchase, if the improvement is only 0.05%. That said, I agree. The benefit doesn't have to be big to justify it.
      - Retric 13y ago
        Ops. Yea 1/2 not 1/20th of 1%. The .0005 number is correct, but I messed up changing that to a fraction of a %.
        pedrosorio 13y ago
        1/2 of 1% is 0.005
- sundvor 13y ago
  Yep. At my home office I have 3x Dell U2412Ms (1920x1200 i.e. 16:10) on an Ergotech stand and I'm absolutely loving this physical setup for programming. The side monitors float over my desk (an Ikea Galant, corner version), and having a central monitor with two surrounds is just ideal for me. I much prefer this to a dual screen setup. I think that ideally the same 24s would deliver a 2560x1600 resolution, however I'm still quite happy with the setup as it is. 3x 27"s might be nice, but I fear it could become too much. Well, at least for my wallet, that is! An issue with the 4k displays is that if you're going to have 3x of them, you're going to hit GPU walls very, very quickly.
kayoone 13y ago
Id say in terms of productivity it adds almost nothing because the biggest things holding a programmers productivity back have nothing todo with display size. Better get rid of interruptions, procrastination, bad tools etc. That being said programmer happiness is elemental and a 42inch 4K screen would add to that for me :)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jkscm 13y ago
  Tabbing between windows can be an distraction. The stack-like function of the tab mechanism does not help it either.
  - sparkie 13y ago
    You should try a tiling WM in which you can switch between windows based on their location. eg, alt+{left,down,up,right}
    - jkscm 13y ago
      Any recommendations? I dived into xmonad some time ago but I never found a good and fast windows manager for OS X.
      - follower 13y ago
        There was some discussion about OS X window management options on another thread the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998309
      - sparkie 13y ago
        I use bspwm, which has a very simple design and follows the unix philosophy quite nicely. A single daemon process which manages windows, and all configuration is done with the shell via the `bspc` command, which talks to the daemon over a socket. A separate daemon (sxhkd) is used for keybindings, and the configuration for sxhkd is just a map of keybindings (including mouse buttons) to shell commands, with a very simple DSL to allow groups of commands, and the use of the cursor position. Example from my configuration: alt + {Left,Down,Up,Right,h,j,k,l} bspc window --focus {left,down,up,right,left,down,up,right} {alt,super} + Tab bspc {window,monitor} --focus next alt + super + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --swap {left,down,up,right} super + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --edge {left,down,up,right} push super + shift + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --edge {right,up,down,left} pull super + q bspc window --kill Worth noting that bspwm treats monitors individually when using window commands, so you need a separate set to handle windows on diff monitors (unless using Xinerama). I've no idea whether it works on OSX though. 2bwm seems to be popular among OSX users, but I've not tried it.
mtrimpe 13y ago
I've had three 30" Cinema Display's side by side for a while and it was awesome; except for my neck hurting like hell after a while when looking at the outer half of the outer screens :) That convinced me that, unless you're going to make a circular desk with a keyboard that moves along with your chair, the perfect setup is a 30" display with two 20"-ers next to it in portrait mode.
- erikig 13y ago
  I'd take that to the next step where in the future all workstations will be a nice tall igloo shape where the entire roof and walls are the display and you can swivel around you seat (with embedded keyboard).
annnnd 13y ago
I think the "ideal size" depends on the size of the monitor you are currently using. I was happy with 29" initially... now I can't wait to try something larger. I am not sure where this process ends, but 50" sounds very nice indeed. :)
sentenza 13y ago
I don't really understand how a TV can be needlessly large. Also, I don't understand why people still buy TVs in 2014. When I replaced my TV about 4-5 years ago, I bought a 500€ beamer and a 100€ retractable canvas. Sure, that beamer only has 1024x768, but today you'll certainly be able to buy something significantly better in a similar price range. With my living room PC connected to the beamer, my "screen" is 1.7 meters wide, I can watch movies, television, play games, have internet, linux (rsync!, ssh!) and all of that significantly cheaper than any "decent" television set. Why do people (given they have the space) still buy televisions?
- dagw 13y ago
  A couple of friend of mine have have gone with that solution and to be perfectly honest the bad image quality really annoys me on the cheap setups. The one setup that I've seen and liked cost in excesses of 2500€. I'd much rather have a 40" TV with the best image quality possible than a crappy 80" image from a cheap projector.
  - Joeri 13y ago
    At my office they replaced the beamers with big ctouch touchscreens. It's a huge improvement even at the smaller diagonal because of the clear and sharp image. Plus, it's cool to stand there pulling stuff across the screen minority report style.
- gnur 13y ago
  Because contrast and brightness are much higher on televisons. Also, televisons often offer more features like usb, networking, sound and cec. I'm not entirely sure about most beamers, but I don't believe they offer the same integration with a chromecast or raspbmc that my current 500 euro sharp aquos does.
  - matthewrudy 13y ago
    my setup is a Samsung 42" TV + AppleTV + a PS4. The colours and clarify are amazing (the sound isn't) I use the TV for BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and Viki (I'm into asian soap operas) I use the Apple TV for Youtube, The PS4 is for Battlefield 4, I use Airplay for anything else
espeed 13y ago
Jakob Nielsen's research on "ideal size" is 48Kx32K (1200 dpi) @ 1200 fps for perfect image quality. See http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-much-bandwidth-is-enough-a-tbps/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-much-bandwidth-is-enough... His 2012 recommendation was 30" or larger screens for knowledge workers (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-screens-getting-bigger/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-screens-getting-big...).
- fosap 13y ago
  120 fps, not 1200 fps
- Gravityloss 13y ago
  Only 120 fps actually in the article. He also doesn't talk about the color space, only about the granularity. But anyway, quite nice that there are articles that take a little bit of a human point of view and not just the usual "existing technology, just 20% better is good enough for everyone"
  - leoc 13y ago
    It seems there's already a monitor which offers to upscale your 120Hz signal to 240Hz: http://www.eizo.com/global/products/duravision/fdf2405w/index.html http://www.eizo.com/global/products/duravision/fdf2405w/inde... . And the product page suggests that there's already a ready market for it, among viewers of high-res satellite imagery: apparently the blur when scrolling such images on a mere 120Hz (and high-persistence) display is notable enough to be distracting.
- Sambdala 13y ago
  "A 48Kx32K pixel monitor with 24-bit-per-pixel color needs 4.6 GB videoRAM, so it will probably be about seventeen years (2012) before these perfect monitors are commonplace."
  - fredsted 13y ago
    We probably would've had them now if display tech didn't stop progressing in 1999....
princeb 13y ago
indeed it is subjective. it varies between persons, and for the same person it varies between tasks. i use 4x2 24" in the office. some days it feels like i could use more screen space. but it has also reached a point i need to roll back and forth on my desk to read all ends. coding work is concentrated in 3.5 screens. spreadsheets, browsers, email, front ends, other software occupy the rest. and yet it still hasn't released me from alt-tab hell. there will always be that bunch of information that you must have in front of you no matter the cost, and the cost is that you still have to alt tab the less important windows -email, excel, hacker news.
marvin 13y ago
I'm using a 30-inch monitor to program regularly, and it isn't nearly enough once you learn to use it properly. Have you really tried this out?
- dagw 13y ago
  I've tried a 30-inch monitor for a couple of days and to be honest I much prefer 2x24" monitors.
scotty79 13y ago
> At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? You won't know until you try. I hesitated a lot about switching my CRT from 14" to 17". After half an hour of work going back felt like staring at ATM bulb shaped display. I'd like to try very large monitors but it's pointless without higher resolution so I'll wait until I can buy 4K as a toy.
- gaius 13y ago
  Indeed. I remember in the 90s even going from 14" to 15" was noticeably better (running MacOS 7). 17" was better yet and the 19" on the Unix workstations - wow. Now my Apple Cinema Display feels cramped and I'll probably add another...
larve 13y ago
I use 6 19" monitors (using a combination of display port, HDMI, display link adapters). It's a bit of a mess to set up, but I like the actual physical splitting of the monitors (I have the logfile monitor, the google chrome monitor, the firefox monitor, the jira monitor, the editor monitor, etc...). Also, it plays in very well with a tiling window manager where I can just switch windows from one monitor to the next without having to worry too much about tiling "inside" of a screen. On bigger than 19" monitors, I find I can fit more than 2 windows side by side and then it becomes a weird game of rearranging windows. I have been using this for 3+ years now, and while people always look at me like I'm crazy when setting up 6-7 monitors on my desk (I freelance so I usually lug them around or just buy a used set of monitors for a few bucks), I could never go back. Not switching windows, and using your peripheral vision for things like database load, or just plain having 2 editor monitors and 2 reference browsers open at the same time is invaluable. While I can work on a single monitor, even a huge one (I love the 3k x 2k notebook resolutions), I feel cramped because I don't have the physical separation that comes from the multiple monitors.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  Think I understand where you're coming from, but for me virtual desktops give the same separation. Do you use virtual desktops as well?
  - larve 13y ago
    nope, just that layout. 6 really comes into play when doing web development. These days I'm usually running with 2 or 3 external monitors, as I don't have as many things to keep track off. Having virtual desktops hides the kind of peripheral vision thing I like having, plus I have to think in terms of "hidden" things, which I usually tend to forget about anyway.
- Udo 13y ago
  Having had a six-display setup for about 5 years, I agree. The Mac Pro made it quite easy to set up, too. Having separate (preferrably HD) panels, each dedicated to one window, feels excellent. For about half a year now, I've been using a 3-display setup centered around a large iMac. While the iMac display is nice, I kind of miss my old work flow. The iMac resolution is quite awkward, actually, because it's too small to split in two or four separate work areas, but at the same time it's way too big for just one window. There is really no good way to use that screen efficiently. So I often end up splitting it into two overlapping halves with a code window and some other window, but on the whole the setup is not as satisfying as the 6-screen.
leoc 13y ago
> At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? Well, diminishing returns have already begun by the time you get to the sunlit uplands of about 1024 × 768 (non-interlaced! in 16-bit colour!). Every further step up feels somewhat incremental in comparison. But are further steps worthwhile? Yes. There's a reason why people use maps and papers printed in 600dpi and above, then spread several of them out at the same time on a big table. Can you display this chart http://xkcd.com/657/large/ http://xkcd.com/657/large/ so that all of the text is clearly legible, and without having to scroll or zoom? Can you display this chart and two long excerpts from LOTR side-by-side so that all of the text is clearly legible and you can move between all three just by moving your eyes, without scrolling or zooming inside any window or moving, resizing or tabbing between windows? If not, then your monitor isn't as high-detail as it should be and/or doesn't cover as much of your visual field as it should. And that test doesn't come all that close to testing the upper limits of what you can usefully do with progressively-better displays.
sdfjkl 13y ago
I found 24-27" the right size for me. Anything larger than that feels uncomfortable due to too much movement of the head.

by r0h1n 13y ago

hvidgaard 13y ago

I can't argue about a 39" monitor, but having more screen estate boosts productivity for me to the extend that I'm sure that I could use 3 27" over my current 2 24". Avoiding alt+tab means I get my information quicker when I need it from another window, and I get back to the previous context faster. Sometimes I need both but does not have space and is tabbing back and forth.

r0h1n 13y ago
Sure, but if one were to plot (a) the number of alt-tabs you do in a day, versus (b) screen size in inches...don't you think at some point the delta benefits would start leveling off?
- Retric 13y ago
  Sure, diminishing returns kick in but monitors are cheap and programmers are expensive. It's the same reason that 16+GB of ram and SSD's are worth it. Not because most people need it but the cost is low enough that the productivity gains need to be minuscule to be worth it. aka Assuming monitors last ~3 years and cost below 2,000$ it takes a tiny difference to be worth it because your not just comparing productivity delta's but also cost delta's. In other words a 2,000$ monitor that improves productivity by 1/20th of 1% than a 1,000$ monitor is clearly worth it over 3 years even if the difference is simply eye strain. 3x (salary + benefits + overhead) * .0005 > 1000$. PS: Another way to look at it is spending an extra 1-2k per year on salary over industry standard rarely tempts programmers but an extra 1-2k per year on hardware might.
  - hvidgaard 13y ago
    That wasn't the best thought out example. The total yearly cost for a programmer would have to exceed 666.666 $ to justify a 1000 $ purchase, if the improvement is only 0.05%. That said, I agree. The benefit doesn't have to be big to justify it.
    - Retric 13y ago
      Ops. Yea 1/2 not 1/20th of 1%. The .0005 number is correct, but I messed up changing that to a fraction of a %.
      - pedrosorio 13y ago
        1/2 of 1% is 0.005
sundvor 13y ago
Yep. At my home office I have 3x Dell U2412Ms (1920x1200 i.e. 16:10) on an Ergotech stand and I'm absolutely loving this physical setup for programming. The side monitors float over my desk (an Ikea Galant, corner version), and having a central monitor with two surrounds is just ideal for me. I much prefer this to a dual screen setup. I think that ideally the same 24s would deliver a 2560x1600 resolution, however I'm still quite happy with the setup as it is. 3x 27"s might be nice, but I fear it could become too much. Well, at least for my wallet, that is! An issue with the 4k displays is that if you're going to have 3x of them, you're going to hit GPU walls very, very quickly.

kayoone 13y ago

Id say in terms of productivity it adds almost nothing because the biggest things holding a programmers productivity back have nothing todo with display size. Better get rid of interruptions, procrastination, bad tools etc. That being said programmer happiness is elemental and a 42inch 4K screen would add to that for me :)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jkscm 13y ago
Tabbing between windows can be an distraction. The stack-like function of the tab mechanism does not help it either.
- sparkie 13y ago
  You should try a tiling WM in which you can switch between windows based on their location. eg, alt+{left,down,up,right}
  - jkscm 13y ago
    Any recommendations? I dived into xmonad some time ago but I never found a good and fast windows manager for OS X.
    - follower 13y ago
      There was some discussion about OS X window management options on another thread the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998309
    - sparkie 13y ago
      I use bspwm, which has a very simple design and follows the unix philosophy quite nicely. A single daemon process which manages windows, and all configuration is done with the shell via the `bspc` command, which talks to the daemon over a socket. A separate daemon (sxhkd) is used for keybindings, and the configuration for sxhkd is just a map of keybindings (including mouse buttons) to shell commands, with a very simple DSL to allow groups of commands, and the use of the cursor position. Example from my configuration: alt + {Left,Down,Up,Right,h,j,k,l} bspc window --focus {left,down,up,right,left,down,up,right} {alt,super} + Tab bspc {window,monitor} --focus next alt + super + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --swap {left,down,up,right} super + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --edge {left,down,up,right} push super + shift + {Left,Down,Up,Right} bspc window --edge {right,up,down,left} pull super + q bspc window --kill Worth noting that bspwm treats monitors individually when using window commands, so you need a separate set to handle windows on diff monitors (unless using Xinerama). I've no idea whether it works on OSX though. 2bwm seems to be popular among OSX users, but I've not tried it.

mtrimpe 13y ago

I've had three 30" Cinema Display's side by side for a while and it was awesome; except for my neck hurting like hell after a while when looking at the outer half of the outer screens :) That convinced me that, unless you're going to make a circular desk with a keyboard that moves along with your chair, the perfect setup is a 30" display with two 20"-ers next to it in portrait mode.

erikig 13y ago
I'd take that to the next step where in the future all workstations will be a nice tall igloo shape where the entire roof and walls are the display and you can swivel around you seat (with embedded keyboard).

annnnd 13y ago

I think the "ideal size" depends on the size of the monitor you are currently using. I was happy with 29" initially... now I can't wait to try something larger. I am not sure where this process ends, but 50" sounds very nice indeed. :)

sentenza 13y ago

I don't really understand how a TV can be needlessly large. Also, I don't understand why people still buy TVs in 2014. When I replaced my TV about 4-5 years ago, I bought a 500€ beamer and a 100€ retractable canvas. Sure, that beamer only has 1024x768, but today you'll certainly be able to buy something significantly better in a similar price range. With my living room PC connected to the beamer, my "screen" is 1.7 meters wide, I can watch movies, television, play games, have internet, linux (rsync!, ssh!) and all of that significantly cheaper than any "decent" television set. Why do people (given they have the space) still buy televisions?

dagw 13y ago
A couple of friend of mine have have gone with that solution and to be perfectly honest the bad image quality really annoys me on the cheap setups. The one setup that I've seen and liked cost in excesses of 2500€. I'd much rather have a 40" TV with the best image quality possible than a crappy 80" image from a cheap projector.
- Joeri 13y ago
  At my office they replaced the beamers with big ctouch touchscreens. It's a huge improvement even at the smaller diagonal because of the clear and sharp image. Plus, it's cool to stand there pulling stuff across the screen minority report style.
gnur 13y ago
Because contrast and brightness are much higher on televisons. Also, televisons often offer more features like usb, networking, sound and cec. I'm not entirely sure about most beamers, but I don't believe they offer the same integration with a chromecast or raspbmc that my current 500 euro sharp aquos does.
- matthewrudy 13y ago
  my setup is a Samsung 42" TV + AppleTV + a PS4. The colours and clarify are amazing (the sound isn't) I use the TV for BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and Viki (I'm into asian soap operas) I use the Apple TV for Youtube, The PS4 is for Battlefield 4, I use Airplay for anything else

espeed 13y ago

Jakob Nielsen's research on "ideal size" is 48Kx32K (1200 dpi) @ 1200 fps for perfect image quality. See http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-much-bandwidth-is-enough-a-tbps/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-much-bandwidth-is-enough... His 2012 recommendation was 30" or larger screens for knowledge workers (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-screens-getting-bigger/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-screens-getting-big...).

fosap 13y ago
120 fps, not 1200 fps
Gravityloss 13y ago
Only 120 fps actually in the article. He also doesn't talk about the color space, only about the granularity. But anyway, quite nice that there are articles that take a little bit of a human point of view and not just the usual "existing technology, just 20% better is good enough for everyone"
- leoc 13y ago
  It seems there's already a monitor which offers to upscale your 120Hz signal to 240Hz: http://www.eizo.com/global/products/duravision/fdf2405w/index.html http://www.eizo.com/global/products/duravision/fdf2405w/inde... . And the product page suggests that there's already a ready market for it, among viewers of high-res satellite imagery: apparently the blur when scrolling such images on a mere 120Hz (and high-persistence) display is notable enough to be distracting.
Sambdala 13y ago
"A 48Kx32K pixel monitor with 24-bit-per-pixel color needs 4.6 GB videoRAM, so it will probably be about seventeen years (2012) before these perfect monitors are commonplace."
- fredsted 13y ago
  We probably would've had them now if display tech didn't stop progressing in 1999....

princeb 13y ago

indeed it is subjective. it varies between persons, and for the same person it varies between tasks. i use 4x2 24" in the office. some days it feels like i could use more screen space. but it has also reached a point i need to roll back and forth on my desk to read all ends. coding work is concentrated in 3.5 screens. spreadsheets, browsers, email, front ends, other software occupy the rest. and yet it still hasn't released me from alt-tab hell. there will always be that bunch of information that you must have in front of you no matter the cost, and the cost is that you still have to alt tab the less important windows -email, excel, hacker news.

marvin 13y ago

I'm using a 30-inch monitor to program regularly, and it isn't nearly enough once you learn to use it properly. Have you really tried this out?

dagw 13y ago
I've tried a 30-inch monitor for a couple of days and to be honest I much prefer 2x24" monitors.

scotty79 13y ago

> At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? You won't know until you try. I hesitated a lot about switching my CRT from 14" to 17". After half an hour of work going back felt like staring at ATM bulb shaped display. I'd like to try very large monitors but it's pointless without higher resolution so I'll wait until I can buy 4K as a toy.

gaius 13y ago
Indeed. I remember in the 90s even going from 14" to 15" was noticeably better (running MacOS 7). 17" was better yet and the 19" on the Unix workstations - wow. Now my Apple Cinema Display feels cramped and I'll probably add another...

larve 13y ago

I use 6 19" monitors (using a combination of display port, HDMI, display link adapters). It's a bit of a mess to set up, but I like the actual physical splitting of the monitors (I have the logfile monitor, the google chrome monitor, the firefox monitor, the jira monitor, the editor monitor, etc...). Also, it plays in very well with a tiling window manager where I can just switch windows from one monitor to the next without having to worry too much about tiling "inside" of a screen. On bigger than 19" monitors, I find I can fit more than 2 windows side by side and then it becomes a weird game of rearranging windows. I have been using this for 3+ years now, and while people always look at me like I'm crazy when setting up 6-7 monitors on my desk (I freelance so I usually lug them around or just buy a used set of monitors for a few bucks), I could never go back. Not switching windows, and using your peripheral vision for things like database load, or just plain having 2 editor monitors and 2 reference browsers open at the same time is invaluable. While I can work on a single monitor, even a huge one (I love the 3k x 2k notebook resolutions), I feel cramped because I don't have the physical separation that comes from the multiple monitors.

gizzlon 13y ago
Think I understand where you're coming from, but for me virtual desktops give the same separation. Do you use virtual desktops as well?
- larve 13y ago
  nope, just that layout. 6 really comes into play when doing web development. These days I'm usually running with 2 or 3 external monitors, as I don't have as many things to keep track off. Having virtual desktops hides the kind of peripheral vision thing I like having, plus I have to think in terms of "hidden" things, which I usually tend to forget about anyway.
Udo 13y ago
Having had a six-display setup for about 5 years, I agree. The Mac Pro made it quite easy to set up, too. Having separate (preferrably HD) panels, each dedicated to one window, feels excellent. For about half a year now, I've been using a 3-display setup centered around a large iMac. While the iMac display is nice, I kind of miss my old work flow. The iMac resolution is quite awkward, actually, because it's too small to split in two or four separate work areas, but at the same time it's way too big for just one window. There is really no good way to use that screen efficiently. So I often end up splitting it into two overlapping halves with a code window and some other window, but on the whole the setup is not as satisfying as the 6-screen.

leoc 13y ago

> At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? Well, diminishing returns have already begun by the time you get to the sunlit uplands of about 1024 × 768 (non-interlaced! in 16-bit colour!). Every further step up feels somewhat incremental in comparison. But are further steps worthwhile? Yes. There's a reason why people use maps and papers printed in 600dpi and above, then spread several of them out at the same time on a big table. Can you display this chart http://xkcd.com/657/large/ http://xkcd.com/657/large/ so that all of the text is clearly legible, and without having to scroll or zoom? Can you display this chart and two long excerpts from LOTR side-by-side so that all of the text is clearly legible and you can move between all three just by moving your eyes, without scrolling or zooming inside any window or moving, resizing or tabbing between windows? If not, then your monitor isn't as high-detail as it should be and/or doesn't cover as much of your visual field as it should. And that test doesn't come all that close to testing the upper limits of what you can usefully do with progressively-better displays.

sdfjkl 13y ago

I found 24-27" the right size for me. Anything larger than that feels uncomfortable due to too much movement of the head.