Screen Real Estate: How Much Is Enough?
When I started in this industry, nearly all work was done using small 9″ to 15″ monochrome screens. Some places still used paper terminals (I can still hear the loud “neeeeehhh” noise these things made). Tubes were expensive, so they stayed small. There was no such thing as a windowing system.
Today I use a 21″ flat screen monitor and could still use more space. Generally I have a word processor, Firefox, Eudora mail, Dreamweaver, and a copy of Eclipse or NetBeans open at any given time. Things get crowded.
Happily, several solutions to this problem are available. Two of the three involve hardware, but at least neither is overly expensive. The first requires the purchase of a larger, preferably wide screen monitor. With the wide 16:9 aspect ratio, you can have multiple windows open without overlapping the output significantly.
I know writers who keep two or more documents open, and who need the ability to toggle between the two without having either obscured. Wide monitors generally allow this to happen without resorting to a screen resolution that would require a magnifying glass.
The second hardware solution requires a second monitor. Windows started supporting dual head configurations, i.e. two monitors active simultaneously that show different output, as of XP (it’s amusing to note that the Macintosh could do this in around 1992!). Add a monitor, change some video settings, and you now have double the screen real estate. You can move open applications from one screen to the other. Of course, users with limited desk space may find this difficult.
The only other option for improving screen real estate is to increase your current monitor’s resolution. If you’re using standard SVGA resolution (1024×768) you can try 1280×1024 or even higher as long as your video card and monitor support it. The problem with this option is that eyestrain can result, especially over longer periods. If you need space, try the cheapest option first. If that doesn’t work, a trip to your local PC hardware dealer may be the only choice.