Search results matching tag 'monitors'

Re: The Law of Equivalent Exchange

icelava — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:08:45 GMT

I wrote too soon.

Just when I was "praising" the other monitor for "behaving" itself the past two years.

As though in attempt to mock me, this obedient monitor of mine fizzles out in a flash tonight. Looks like I'm going to get acquainted with the ViewSonic service staff even more.

Is it mere coincidence? That this happened so quickly in a space of a week? Just when I decided to reverse the roles of the monitors by swapping the program windows I usually place on each side?

One has to wonder.

Re: The Law of Equivalent Exchange

icelava — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:14:19 GMT

Ah yes. Life's been good after I got the monitor back from the service centre, ja? After waiting bloody weeks for the necessary components to be shipped all the way from Taiwan, ja? Well, I thought so too. I thought I could put this matter to rest.

But no, some children are downright cheeky and mischievous. Those who do not understand the meaning of "discipline" and "behaviour". They may sit still for awhile, but their incorrigible ways soon take over again and wreck havoc around the classroom. And so this seemingly repaired monitor, decided to play the doze-off game again at the beginning of the week (must be a Monday thing). Hey, snap out of it! Don't go blank on me. Wake up and show me the desktop screen! I like to see my windows there instead of a black hole, thank you. Switch off-on, yes and stay that way.

Then it started farting out this foul smell. Not your regular burnt plastic smell, but close to it. Argh. And there goes the screen fizzling out. Forever. Argh.

Back to the service centre. My brother helped bring my monitor to and fro during the previous incident, so I hadn't met the folks there. But they recognised this monitor really quickly. Either I am the only person in Singapore who buys such high-res monitors, or I am the only one who keeps the electrical current running even when I switch them off. (which does not explain why the other monitor has been functioning a-ok the past two years)

Thankfully, they had the spare capacitors on hand, replaced the one that melted down, and had it back on my lap the next day. Apparently, the technician reported the parts from Taiwan weren't that good either.

-__-

Wished somebody could've warned me of the detrimental effects of overusing the mangekyou sharingan.

The Law of Equivalent Exchange

icelava — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:35:03 GMT

In Fullmetal Alchemist, the First Law of alchemy is that of Equivalent Exchange. It states that for something that is to be obtained, something else of equivalent value has to be given. This roughly keeps the balance of material existing in the world.

So I have been operating dual monitors for a rather long time now. During that span of time, I even upgraded the pair to a higher dot-pitch model. I can say - without a doubt - it is an essential setup for any serious software developer. But as good as two monitors was, I had long been thinking of something even better - the coveted tri-monitor configuration. But until recently, such setups required twin video cards. And yes indeed, in recent times ATI with their Eyefinity range of video cards released some models sporting two DVI ports + one DisplayPort port.

The time is now. I took the plunge and added a Dell Ultrasharp U2410 24" DisplayPort monitor into the middle. I have gained the third eye.

And so life is good thereafter, right? That was what I thought. I was happy for a good two weeks of triple the productivity, or triple the distraction, depending on how one views it. I had encountered some odd problems with the new DisplayPort monitor mysteriously getting disabling in Windows display settings after RDCing to it from outside, but i brushed that off as i found a usable workaround (of typing in the blind to logon). The real problem came yesterday when one of the old monitor pair just lost video output. The monitor did not complain of "no DVI signal"; it was still rightfully powered on and my mouse can "disappear" into its void space. I unplugged the DVI cable and reattached it, and all was good (albeit some Windows display realignment). This morning it totally fizzled, giving out a screechy noise each time it got reattached to display a darkened subdued image but blowing the screen into darkness again.

But is it the monitor or the video card? Wait, did I mention I'm pressed for time to learn and prepare training materials? MUST IT HAPPEN NOW? Of course it does. Things must always break when one is trying to focus on more important issues, so that, you know, we can deliberately procrastinate. Anyway so I swapped DVI ports between the twin monitors in order to confirm: the monitor is the cranky device. At this point, the old DVI had been exchanged for a spanking DisplayPort. Ok, so they are not of equal value. But I am stuck to two eyes again.

Bleah.

The next upgrade for dual-display configurations

icelava — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:52:10 GMT

It has been roughly over a year now since I permanently setup a dual-display workstation at home. The experience has been undeniably liberating. There is no hesitation on my part to recommend to anybody serious about getting some windowing productivity during their computing work to go with two, or even three, monitors. It is not an extravagance, really. For the price of roughly a single 30" or 24" model, one acquire two 19" or 20" displays, and get to maximise two windows. And they are not blocking each other. Unless, of course, you like maximising Notepad to a full stretch of 30 inches and get to read behind the lines and recognise the hidden meanings behind all those text.

Having said that, the past year has also been a period of tolerance for me. Why? Because the Philips 190CW7CB which I originally bought for my twin-display setup, is manufactured for a resolution of 1440x900. What's wrong with that, you ask? That is typical the resolution specified for monitors that size! And that, is exactly wrong in my eyes.

Still don't get it? Let me then lay out in the clear what I've always suspected of myself - despite being short sighted, I probably possess more cones in my foveas than a regular person. And what does that mean? I can perceive, without strain, small dot sizes. Take for example, I regularly print four A4 pages into one physical page of A4 (high printer resolutions FTW). People claim me to be insane. They cannot make out details that tiny. Even two pages into a single physical A4 can be a challenge to their eyes. Optimally its a one-to-one A4, or even better, an A4 to A3 resizing. That is just plain wastage of paper in my opinion. Eight pages on a single sheet of A4 (double side) is my way of saving the trees.

Translated to monitor terms, that means dot pitch of contemporary LCD monitors are ridiculously large. How large? My 19" Philips 190CWs have a whopping 0.285mm size. If you look closely, you cannot miss the RGB sub pixels. It had baffled me throughout the years why vendors kept dishing out such monstrous dot pitches, making me stick to CRTs (with their sweet super-fine dot pitch ratings) for a fairly long while. I was only "forced" to LCDs when I started mobile computing with laptops. I could only conclude my eyes are not normal. Now if only I had Superman's eyes to perceive X-rays too and see through clothing.... oh wait, then all I would see are just bones.

And so the tolerance broke into despair when I recently purchased the Dell XPS M1530. This sexy machine emits pixels at 1680x1050 in an entire diagonal space of, 15.4 inches - I can fit one of my 19" monitor's desktop area inside my laptop display with room to spare. I tell you, desktop LCD manufacturers, it is a total disgrace. That was clearly the last straw for me. It was time to look around for a 1680x1050 model for my desktop, to relief myself of this year-long pain. My search initially dug out the Samsung 206BW, while at 20", is larger than my current setup. But not by much. With a dot pitch of 0.258mm it certainly is much more acceptable for my eyes. The problem? It came out roughly two months after I bought this workstation last year, making it a listed but phased-out model in stores. And guess what, 20" is a past fad and a largely abandoned manufacturing process; the trend is 22" models now. Had I delayed my purchase of the workstation by two months... Swell.

Just when I was about to give up, one shop assistant recommended me to consider ViewSonic's VX1940w. A no-frills products, at a great bargain price, only that it is currently the only 19" model in the market featuring 1680x1050. A sizzling dot pitch of 0.243mm.

God sent.

But I did not buy immediately though. The dot pitch and resolution are irresistable, but having been bitten recently I took some precautionary checks. Reviews and opinions are mixed - while practically everybody praised the high resolution (guess I am not alone after all), image and colour quality aren't meeting the expectations of some. Decision point - when you cannot have the best of both worlds, you have to pick the factor more important/useful to you.

Working, not playing, in a higher resolution and finer pitch, has more practical value here. After all, I have another complete computer just for entertainment use, so why should I complain.

Another $584 down this month on top of other costly expenses. Am I happy now? Somewhat. Am I suffering? Not anymore.

Settling in the multi-monitor league

icelava — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:45:38 GMT

I have previously recorded my successful search for a suitable spacy desk (look how neat it was back then) to position my room computers. A year on, I am ready to make complete use of that real estate.

Prior to retiring my five-year-old Dell Inspiron 4150, I attached to it an unused LCD monitor (the one next to the laptop on the left) as a secondary screen. I then realised, for my own self, why others have been enthusiastically promoting the use of multiple screen layouts. The reduction in window switching, which seems like a petty little matter, actually becomes a big thing; suddenly I was not suffering from claustrophobia with the laptop's mere 1024x768 measurement of a coolie's cubicle.

My decision then, was to go multi-monitor with my succeeding machine (the desktop on the right). As a developer, I'd prefer to have three monitors so an Outlook-Visual Studio-browser layout would be possible. However, looking for hardware that supports three video outputs has been a challenge here in Singapore, so I settled for the next best thing - two wide-screens.

There have been extra issues to deal with though. First, the video adapter I am using is an nVidia GeForce 6150 integrated into the motherboard, the only model around that has both VGA db-15 + DVI ports. The colours are lush and rich in the monitor connected via the DVI port, but the legacy db-15 port is giving out pale, washed-out colours in the low and high-tone areas. I have been playing around with the video settings a lot, but cannot come close to recreating the brilliance of the DVI display. I concluded from the reports of others that there is simply no way a db-15 can have enough bandwidth for a rich-colour display.

Second, I actually work more at the office than from home. :-) So remote desktop connection is a very important technology for me. The combined resolution of the twin screens equals 2880x900, but physically they are recognised as separate by the system. But when I connect remotely with the same resolution setting, it becomes a single ultra-wide display monitor. My desktop habit is to pull the Windows taskbar vertically to the side, and with this case, to the "middle" of the screen so that I do not have to move the mouse far from either screen. When remote desktop takes over as a unified screen, the taskbar in the middle actually stretches the entire length of one monitor making for a really prominent taskbar 1440 pixels long. Yes, so I that I have 0.00% chance of not being able to find the taskbar. The solution? ~~I have to make the remote desktop connect at less than 2880 pixels wide. 2879 makes the grade.~~ UPDATE: wrong; it appears it works some times, and some times not.

Thirdly, whatever productivity I was seeking to gain from this setup probably gets cancelled out due to a variety of problems. It looks like 64-bit drivers for Windows Vista, and I mean stable drivers, are far and few. For most people 64-bit computing is still a far future. But for developers who are currently aiming at 4GB RAM and beyond like I do, be warned. Pain likely ensues.

Still, there is no way I will go back to single-monitor machines.

NOTE: for those who are asking, the centre PC - connecting the middle two monitors - is my entertainment machine. I use that to play games, but hardly do that now so it's serving as a very expensive television for my cable TV line. Yes, there is a TV tuner card connected to the set-top device, which got masked behind the left wide-screen LCD monitor.