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17 May 2005

Can a monitor be ‘too big’?

Published in Technology  |  4 Comments

At work I recently got bequethed a 20″ widescreen LCD. I’m a big fan of the Dell LCD monitors, crisp, feature rich (dual inputs on 17″, QUAD input on 20″). In fact, the 2005FPW got great review, and uses the same lcd panel as the Apple Monitor. If you can pick one up on sale for as little as $380, I highly recommend it.

However, after setting it up and beginning to use it, I’m actually posed with the question: “Can a monitor be too big?” The answer is a decidedly… probably. I just moved up from a 17″ to this widescreen monstrosity. I am actually at a loss for my data and I feel that I have to swivel my neck to take in the whole screen.

Another thing: Firefox under windows doesn’t seem to play well with the ultra-wide resolution. I’m currently running at the LCD native 1680×1050. When I have the Firefox window in the far-right of the screen and bring down a menu, the url history or anything the responding menu appears about 1/3 way in from the right-edge of the screen. I think it’s drawing methods must be ‘confused’.

“Too big”? maybe not. “Absurdely huge”? definitely.

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  1. Corrie says:

    May 19th, 2005 at 12:03 pm (#)

    Alas, the trials and tribulations of geeks.

  2. Mom says:

    May 23rd, 2005 at 9:23 am (#)

    Oh well,I could trade with you if you would like ? :)

  3. Juke says:

    August 4th, 2010 at 12:28 am (#)

    I believe 20″ is perfect for business use. Anything larger is inefficient. I had an argument with my manager who wanted to purchase 23″ screens for all staff downstairs. As they have small desks the monitors are “in-their-face” and in my opinion is a workplace health & safety risk. We’d need an on site optometrist for weekly checkups.
    At home though, 23″ would be fantastic.

  4. Andrew says:

    August 8th, 2010 at 10:30 pm (#)

    Thanks for the thoughts Juke – actually given that this post was written in 2005, monitor sizes have changed quite a bit. In fact at work I just bought our engineering team 24″ widescreen monitors. The extra 300px to the side does help in having code documents and web pages up – but is quite “large & in charge”.

    I’m sticking with my current Apple 22″ Cinema display.

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