Dual-monitors

[Board of Command]

A friend just gave me his old computer yesterday, a really old one (486), and it came with an old 14" monitor. The computer I will take apart just for the hell of it, but the monitor I kept and set up as the secondary monitor on my computer.

It's running a pretty pitiful resolution (less than 800x600), so the only things it's good for are Photoshop and watching videos. Since the resolution sucks so much, I can play full screen videos on it without losing any quality. Right now, as I'm typing this, I'm watching Destiny, and the quality is awesome! Way better than it looks on my 19".

So why am I writing this thing? Because to those with single-monitor systems, I suggest you go to a garage sale or something and pick up a small $10 monitor and use it to watch videos, or in the case of this forum, anime. You'll be amazed at the quality you get. Of course, this excludes people with All-in-Wonder cards, as those already have a special video chip so you already get superb quality.

[Assertn]

ive been using dual monitor for over 2 years now.......and its seriously hard to go back to single monitor.....it feels so much more crowded now....
dual monitor is nice for anything ranging from media work to writing a research paper (having the word document fullscreen on one monitor and a web browser on another makes me wonder how i dealt with constant minimizing/maximizing in the past) to even spreading out your everyday tools (ie. Use your main monitor for web surfing and the secondary for aim and winamp)

Right now I have a dual monitor setup for my main pc, and a single monitor for my secondary pc.....but once i get the money, i plan to go dual video and will be able to go QUAD MONITOR i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif

I already have 4 monitors, granted 2 of them are kinda crappy, but one was an old 20in that my dad's business was selling for $10 each and another i found in the campus trash (its a good investment to find out where your university throws out computer hardware. For liability reasons, they usually dont allow their hardware to be given to other people, however if they leave it outside in a big box somewhere, then im sure they cant expect someone to reach in and pull out a few parts i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif I've been able to pick up a 17in CRT and a 60 gig WD drive, among various other things)

[Board of Command]

It's been only a day since I started using dual monitors. It'll take a little while to get used to after using single monitor for so many years. Video quality is the first thing I noticed. I loaded up Destiny this afternoon and the crisp fullscreen image blew me away.

[Assertn]

huh? Video quality isnt something that benefits from dual monitor o_O

is Destiny a game that runs on 2 screens? Those type of games usually arent that great unless you have 3 screens, since otherwise you'll have a gap running right down the middle of your view.

[stos289]

Yeah, dual monitors are pretty great. I actually use my TV as my second monitor for watching videos and anime. Its a pretty easy set-up too, just get an S-Video to S-Video cable and connect it from the TV to the computer. Then get a set of speakers that have a headphone jack connecter and plug it in to your computer and your done. The best part is that I can comfortably lay down on my bed and just watch anime without having to sit on a chair for long periods of time (it starts to get uncomfortable after a while). I suggest dual monitors for all, even if it just for watching videos like I do.

[Board of Command]

Originally posted by: AssertnFailure
huh? Video quality isnt something that benefits from dual monitor o_O

is Destiny a game that runs on 2 screens? Those type of games usually arent that great unless you have 3 screens, since otherwise you'll have a gap running right down the middle of your view.
Only reason video quality is great is because the monitor only supports very low resolutions (less than 8x6). The max resolution is about the resolution of a video file, so when playing fullscreen the video loses no quality. It's more of a benefit of having a small monitor than having dual monitors.

By Destiny I meant watching Seed Destiny

[darkshadow]

lol i can hook up another monitor+ my tv, so that would be a tripple setup i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif, and if you really have alot of monitors, just by a splitter, and presto, all get the same output

[kAi]

I use to use my TV as a secondary monitor of sorts, but since that fucked up, I haven't been able to, but it was only used for watching anime, movies, etc.

Need to get another monitor and TV anyway.

[complich8]

Pairing up identical very adjustable lcd's is definitely the way to go, IMO. I've used mismatched monitors, and while it works, you tend to just throw stuff you don't care about and would be better off minimizing onto the second. Not to mention the eyestrain if the monitors are of different quality.

Some apps are really designed for dual monitor, particularly stuff like Macromedia's Flash MX 2004 IDE. There's so many tools and things you've got to keep track of, it's absolutely miserable to try to do so on a single display worth of space. All my flash devs refuse to work on single monitor, ever since they got onto dual. One of them claims it's very nearly impossible, and having seen the tools, I believe her.

Programming on dual-monitor is great too. You can have your IDE/editor of choice open on one display, and have execution windows, api docs, project outlines, etc open on the other window. I see that setup getting used a lot. A lot of the java programmers at work use dual monitors and stick a fullscreened eclipse on one, and (depending on their preferences and needs) either a vnc session to a linux box or just a bunch of random cmd windows and a web browser on the other.

Office workers can have their word docs and pdf files open and running in one window, and keep outlook on top in another window for alerts and reminders and such. I can't think of a single user in my lab who prefers single monitor to dual, given the space to make it work.

But at home, I have a 2001fp. 1600x1200 native resolution, 20 inches of lcd goodness. I got rid of my 19 inch crt for it, and I very much like it better this way than the mismatched dual setup. Partly because it gives me actual desk space, which is freaking nice, I tell ya.

CRT's are on their way out, and for good reason.

[basey44]

Originally posted by: complich8
CRT's are on their way out, and for good reason.

booo. crt's are awesome, the way they take up ur whole desk, the way they hum, and especially the way they are just a simplified small shitty tv type thingy

*crys* wish i had dual lcd's

[darkshadow]

i really dont like lcd's. i REALLY dont, response times suck big time and picture quality is inferior, DOWN with lcd!!!!

[Assertn]

unless you spend alot of money, lcds generally have lower color accuracy than CRTs do.....
and that is very important when you're in the media business.

I prefer to have a CRT+LCD setup, where the CRT is the primary for doing the graphics work, and the LCD holds all the extra tools and such, like for photoshop, or the actionscript window for Flash.

I admit having the same type of screen for both would be ideal, but since i have so many monitors already, a couple hundred bucks could be better spent on other hardware

[Board of Command]

I hate LCDs. The picture quality isn't even close to CRT and you're always prone to get dead pixels, which means automatic RMA. Once I went to this guy's house and he uses a 15" LCD, and reading text off it is just brutal. Yes, they save a lot of space, but the amount of performance you sacrifice is too much for the desk room you gain. If I can fit a CRT on my desk, I'd wouldn't even consider LCD.

[DB_Hunter]

I use three monitors at work and its annoying... one monitor is good for me.

[darkshadow]

crt:
pro:
best image quality availabe, period.
highest refreshrates
ultra low response times (1-3ms)
last longer
price
no dead or empty pixel problems

cons
size
not all viewable ( 17" is mostly 15.5/16" viewable)
geometry errors
power consuming
biggest 1 i know is about 24" (monitor)

lcd:
pro
space saving
power saving
stylish
perfect geometry

cons
inferior image quality ( horseshit on lower res)
high response times (12-30ms)
price
dead and empty pixel probs
fragile i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif lol

i would never choose lcd over crt

[Board of Command]

Originally posted by: darkshadow
highest refreshrates

The refresh rates work differently for LCD, so in the end they're about equivalent. LCDs are commonly around 60 Hz, which is about equivalent to CRT 85 Hz. But yes, geometry can be a pain in the ass with some CRTs. My dad got an old CRT from work and the geometry is literally unfixable.

[manx]

Originally posted by: darkshadow
crt:
pro:
best image quality availabe, period.
highest refreshrates
ultra low response times (1-3ms)
last longer
price
no dead or empty pixel problems

cons
size
not all viewable ( 17" is mostly 15.5/16" viewable)
geometry errors
power consuming
biggest 1 i know is about 24" (monitor)

lcd:
pro
space saving
power saving
stylish
perfect geometry

cons
inferior image quality ( horseshit on lower res)
high response times (12-30ms)
price
dead and empty pixel probs
fragile lol

i would never choose lcd over crt


response times on lcd <16ms = 60fps+ which is all you need with vsync on so its irrelevant is most cases aswell, even without vsync its near impossible to notice ghosting on a decent panel. IF not impossible, I've never even seen it on mine.

saying CRT last longer than an lcd is crap too, sorry to say, they last awhile and get shittier all the way, but an LCD maintains perfect geometry, and should last indefinately, as long as you are willing to replace the back lights which should last quite a few years. average length that companies say is 60,000 hours / 24 = 2500 days / 365 = 6.84931507 years of continuous use for an lcd under normal use, some even go as high as 80,000 hours. What CRT do you own that has perfect geometry after ~10 years?

dead pixels isnt really a problem either, just send it back for a replacement, most places have a policy of 3+ dead pixels = replacement. having 1 dead pixel without others is usually uncommon in my experiences.

what about no flicker, higher brightness, no magnetic interference

about the only downfall of lcds is color, and if you plan to work outside the native resolution.

oh ya, hi

[darkshadow]

higher brightness, no flicker?
im sry but my lg monitor has the best brightness on a monitor ive seen today, i havent seen an lcd which matches it
and @100hz flicker is non existent for the human eye, and lcd's dont even have proper blacks, because of their stupid brightness
btw i already said crt's dont have perfect geometry, but my mom still has an old 14" crt, 18 years old, and works perfectly so shut up, i do notice ghosting on 12ms, i dont however at 8ms, but 8 and 12ms are still not standard and are higher priced
also those stupid viewing angles on a lcd, and yes i know the HIGHER priced 1s have a larger angle, but its still there,

im buying a monitor 24"crt widescreen monitor for 800euro which does 1024x768@160hz and has a max reso of 2304 x 1440 (1600x1200@100hz)
tell me what lcd could ever offer me that kind of quality at those resolutions for that price?
lcd's are just stupid overpriced space savers nothing more

[Board of Command]

I don't think using 160hz is good for your eyes. I think, not too sure.

[manx]

Originally posted by: darkshadow
higher brightness, no flicker?
im sry but my lg monitor has the best brightness on a monitor ive seen today, i havent seen an lcd which matches it
and @100hz flicker is non existent for the human eye, and lcd's dont even have proper blacks, because of their stupid brightness
btw i already said crt's dont have perfect geometry, but my mom still has an old 14" crt, 18 years old, and works perfectly so shut up, i do notice ghosting on 12ms, i dont however at 8ms, but 8 and 12ms are still not standard and are higher priced
also those stupid viewing angles on a lcd, and yes i know the HIGHER priced 1s have a larger angle, but its still there,

im buying a monitor 24"crt widescreen monitor for 800euro which does 1024x768@160hz and has a max reso of 2304 x 1440 (1600x1200@100hz)
tell me what lcd could ever offer me that kind of quality at those resolutions for that price?
lcd's are just stupid overpriced space savers nothing more

Its undisputable that LCDs have a higher brightness this is a well know and proven fact.

I highly doubt you notice blurring on 12ms, I would challenge you to watch my LCD which is only 16ms and point out when you see blurring, even playing quake 2 at 400fps I never notice it, I cant even tell you one person that's ever noticed it using my computer. If you do notice it, it must be a subpar panel. I notice tearing a lot whithout vsync, but never blurring.

As for the resolutions I know LCDs that will give you 1600x1200, also ones that will give you 1024x768, and I'm sure you could get bigger ones. They do their job ok outside of native resolution, but like I said if you're that anal about stuff running in 1024, you either do a lot of work with old ass apps that cant go past that, or are blind and cant read icons at 1600.

When you buy an LCD you just have to be careful where the native resolution is. I mean a simple solution is just use everything at 1600, and it will look perfect.

[darkshadow]

i never said ionly use 1024x, i only mentioned the refreshrate @ that reso, and no, i see lcd screens ( every brand) every goddamn day, and still none have surpassed the brightness lvls of my lg monitor

[complich8]

my situation is sort of the opposite. I see LCDs and CRTs every day. The thing is, the LCDs are quality, and the CRTs are so-so (trinitrons, mostly).

Given the choice between a pair of dell 1801fp's and a pair of dell 19 inch crts, all of my developers have aimed for the 18 inch lcds.

Sure, you can find exceptional crt monitors that you might prefer to lcds. But it's completely shortsighted to say that that makes all lcds inherently inferior to all crts.

But whatever. If you really honestly prefer your crt, that's fine. But I still sustain that in the average case and in the better-than-average case, you're wrong :-p. I would pit my 2001fp's readability and image quality at 1600x1200 resolution against any ~$500 CRT (which probably means a 21 or 22 incher) any day. Further, viewing angle points are completely wrong about any modern decent LCD -- again take my 2001fp as an example, with it's ~170 degree horizontal and verticle angles.

In the 15 or so lcds I work with on a day to day basis, I've counted a grand total of 2 dead pixels. One's on my 12 inch g3 ibook, and one's on my director's 15 inch g4 powerbook. Maybe I'm just lucky, but two dead pixels out of nearly 20 million across 3 generations and going on 2 years of use is a pretty damned good average, in my opinion. I have four backlights that are beginning to show a little dimming, and I figure I'll get 2 or 3 more years out of the panels before anyone complains about them (giving them 4-5 years of lifespan, which is about what I'm getting out of the CRTs in my lab before the image deteriorates too much to continue using them, so I don't feel too bad about it).

But again, to each his own. Everyone has specific picky things they look for in a monitor, and some people will never be satisfied with one side or the other because it's simply not what they prefer.

[lilphatboi88]

Would u guys mind telling me how you set up dual monitors?

I'm working on a laptop as my main PC, but I also have a spare CRT Sony Vaio Monitor on the spare.

Can anyone tell me how to set it up?

[woofcat]

I have my 20 inch Tv hooked up to my computer all the time. It saves time when watching movies. Also it looks crisp. I have been doing this since my Radeon 7500

[darkshadow]

Originally posted by: lilphatboi88
Would u guys mind telling me how you set up dual monitors?

I'm working on a laptop as my main PC, but I also have a spare CRT Sony Vaio Monitor on the spare.

Can anyone tell me how to set it up?


check your video card, if it has two inputs ( 2x dvi or dvi, vga), connect the other monitor also on it, go into your advanced display proporties, and set you other monitr on either clone or extend

[Assertn]

my friend got a brand new 18in LCD and it already came with 2 dead pixels
both were dead in the ON state, no less....so he constantly has a tiny blue spot and a tiny red spot

sometimes you can have dead pixels without ever noticing.....if the pixel is dead in the on state, but somewhere where you always have white (for example im using the silver toolbar scheme for my windows so the pixels in the bottom row are almost ALWAYS white) then you wont even notice.
Pixels that are dead in the off state, well, those are hard to see anyway

http://www.gdargaud.net/Hack/DeadPixels.html
test your LCD for dead pixels

[010577]

so i don't understand you guys are saying the quality on those old mon is even better than the mons we use now?

[woofcat]

LCD monitors are not as high res as old CRT and Tv's. This is why most hardcore gamers do not have LCD screens. It makes their $500 Videocard useless. Many people use 2 monitors for a personal Media Center. I have my computer as a computer but it is also hooked up to my Tv so i can watch Movies and what not on it.

[Board of Command]

Originally posted by: 010577
so i don't understand you guys are saying the quality on those old mon is even better than the mons we use now?
In terms of quality, yes the "old" monitors are better than the "new" monitors.

[lilphatboi88]

Alright, Thanks Darkshadow.

Although I still have a problem. When I have two monitors, I can use the other for full-screen games or something like that right.? The only thing that seems to be happening is the clone option, and i can't get the extend.

[complich8]

depends on your video card drivers. Many laptops (especially older ones) don't support dualhead operation. Look around in the video card driver, particularly in the card-specific advanced properties pages, see if there's dualhead or dual display config options.

Totally depends on your video card driver though. You might try looking for an updated driver version, which might enable it, or might not. Who knows?

[Board of Command]

Originally posted by: lilphatboi88
Alright, Thanks Darkshadow.

Although I still have a problem. When I have two monitors, I can use the other for full-screen games or something like that right.? The only thing that seems to be happening is the clone option, and i can't get the extend.
The display modes are usually in your video card driver settings. And no, I read an article somewhere that says you can't multitask while playing full screen games. I can't tried it, and I won't either. My guess is that since the game is "fullscreen", it means it's the active program, and it has control over keyboard and mouse. So even though the other monitor is vacant, you can't perform other tasks as long as the game is active.

[complich8]

many fullscreen games can run in "windowed" mode though. And a friend of mine wrote a directx wrapper that forces other dx games into windowed mode (which came in very handy for civ3, though it wasn't perfect). But yeah, if it's running in fullscreen mode, the only way you could "multitask" is to hit alt-tab, which some apps don't support (either catch and drop, or crash, or whatever).

[NM]

I recently started using two monitors and I must say, things are alot more organized now i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif. Its makes things so much easier when your looking up stuff. I was following a tutorial to use for PhotoShop and I put the tutorial on the other monitor. Gone are the days of constant maximizing/minimizing i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif. Quick question though, is it possible to have two separate wallpapers for each monitor? If so, can you tell me how to do it?

[Assertn]

NM, what i do....is create 1 wallpaper that stretches over both monitors....

1) figure out the combined width/height of your dual monitor setup (if you have both monitors set to 1024x768 and horizontally next to each other, for example, then make the image 2048x768). If they are different resolutions, then just take the height of the larger resolution.

2) make your wallpaper or just combine 2 different ones on the canvas. Keep in mind pixel dimensions so one wallpaper doesnt flow into both monitors. If both are the same resolution, then its easy: just make one cover the left half, and one cover the right half.

3) save the image and set it as your wallpaper. Then in the display properties, set your wallpaper to "tile" and it should take care of the rest.

[complich8]

These days my lab is pretty freaking awesome. I'm getting very close to my goal of every workstation having dual monitors, and very close to getting rid of all of the non-black displays, too.

http://seas.mgmt.purdue.edu/~archlich/img/almost_all_dual.jpg

And even better ... dual widescreens!

http://seas.mgmt.purdue.edu/~archlich/img/dual-widescreen-hotness.jpg

(ahh, machine pr0n)

[darkshadow]

thats just awesome XD

[Itachi_y2k5]

lol, thats wicked DELL mania

[complich8]

yeah ..... dell gives us about 20% on average off of the lowest consumer prices you can get ... and they're on our university's "preferred vendor" list, so we don't have to do a lot of paperwork to order from them.

Every time I've bought dell stuff, I've compared 3 or 4 other brands (hp/compaq, ibm, sun, gateway are the usual suspects). Dell is pretty much always cheaper for better stuff... but ....

I want the next server I buy to be a sun dual opty though. Turns out that price point is right about where the dell dual xeon price point is. And since almost everything we do server-side is java, it'd be interesting to have some particularly nice hardware running solaris 10, just to see how it compares to running.

[Board of Command]

Awesome, but the dual-widescreens are elevated quite a bit though. I prefer to have the center of the monitor just a bit below eye level.

[NM]

@Assertn: Thanks alot for the help! I appreciate it.
@complich: Lmao at the machine pr0n! XD Wish I had another LCD widescreen as another monitor though. The other one I'm using is a crappy CRT monitor but it gets the job done I suppose. I say its crappy is because it tends to distort the screen for some reason around the edges and sides. Wanna hook me up with one? i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif Very cool lab room though!

[complich8]

Originally posted by: BOARD_of_command
Awesome, but the dual-widescreens are elevated quite a bit though. I prefer to have the center of the monitor just a bit below eye level.

That's the great part about these things ...

you can push them almost all the way down to the desktop if you want (the one on the left, with the speaker bar attached, goes down far enough that the speaker bar comes within 1/2 inch of the base (or about 1 and a half inches from the tabletop, if that helps you picture it). As low as a CRT without a base, and it still tilts and rotates freely.

One thing I can't fault dell on is the ergonomics of their LCDs. Every angle you want to adjust them, they're adjustable.

(And actually, for me (because I'm huge), that IS a little bit below eye level :-p. The top bezel of the panel raised all the way is about even with my eyebrows.)



Originally posted by: NarutoMaster
The other one I'm using is a crappy CRT monitor but it gets the job done I suppose. I say its crappy is because it tends to distort the screen for some reason around the edges and sides. Wanna hook me up with one?
Very cool lab room though!

Yeah. Most CRTs do that. Cheaper ones, older, and larger ones do it more. It's particularly pronounced when they're paired with lcd's (with their perfect image aspect ratios), as are brightness and color differences.

I wish I could give these things to people .... i'd give myself one, two each to my bosses (in the form of two more dual-widescreen-flat panel workstations), and two to my director. And replace the last CRT's in here with them too (which would take about 10 of them .... hey, it's only about 5 grand worth of flat panel).

Thanks for the complement though. I'm trying to make it progressively nicer looking through computer upgrades. A year ago, it looked more cluttered and the computers were less well-matched. Two years ago, we were in a much smaller, much more crowded room with much worse hardware all around, and everything was a huge ugly mess all the time.