| Sounds like a decent idea if you only want 1 (!) monitor. | Me - - I went for 4 - - 1900 x 1080 IIRC I prefer a single monitor with that many pixels: 4 x 1920 x 1080 == UltraHD. I don't really think that multiple UltraHD monitors would help me. I happen to have a 1920x1200 monitor on my desk too, but I kind of switch modes when switching monitors (they are hooked to diffrent computers). The UltraHD monitor subtends a large arc. | and for that you MUST use the | nvidia | drivers and that install was a real hoot! That might be worth a write-up. | (My system is 3 monitors in a landscape mode and one in a portrait mode. | The vertical one is used a lot when reading pdfs.) All lined up? The more obvious arrangement would be 2 by 2.

| From: o1bigtenor via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Sorry, even if I could afford such a beast I likely wouldn't be able to | read | everything on it. I used to use 6 point fonts in spreadsheets to get more | on the screen when I 'only' had a 1600 x 1200 monitor but now need to | use glasses even with a 10 point font but then with 2 monitors giving me | a 3820 x 1080 virtual I've got lots of room. It's great to read specs when designing a system, but you need to pay attention to your own specs! I mean both meanings of that last word: - specifications, i. e. capabilities of ones own body, including visual acuity, posture, attention span, and so on. - spectacles, i.e. eye glasses Each of us is different, but we can learn from each other. What works for me may help you but it isn't guaranteed to apply. I am near-sighted but aging. - I can focus on a screen that's up to 50cm away, but not much of a 39" flat screen would be 50cm away. - with my "progressive lens" normal glasses, only a small part of the screen is in focus at once, causing me to have to crane my neck to scan the screen. - I bought fixed focus glasses for using with my previous monitor (24" 1920x1200). Best investment I made. I sit perhaps 75 cm from the centre of my 39" monitor and can see all of it without moving my head (but I do move my head when attending one particular area). - the more light, the larger one's depth of field (the range of distances that are in focus at an instant). I have eight LED pot lights in the ceiling of my work room and have not felt the need for task lighting (it has only been a couple of months). Greater resolution can be used two ways: - to display the maximum possible information. As you add pixels, you increase the amount of visual field that the display takes up. For me, 39" UltraHD seems good. I can read an ordinary xterm on this (but it isn't pleasant). There is a limit to how much of a visual field is available. Perhaps I'd be happy with xterm if my monitor were 43". Apparently it is good to have some non-screen in your field of view since staring at a fixed distance for long periods of time is bad for your eyes. - to improve the quality of what is displayed: add more detail. On my 13.3" laptop with 3200x1800 resolution, reading an xterm is a real struggle. But a readable font, with more pixels per character, looks really nice. At some point, added detail will not yield an improved experience. I want lots more resolution and will throw it at both of those. I also want High Dynamic Range so that images can improve in yet another dimension. Your chair and desk height matter too. Most desks put your keyboard too high (mine included; even though it is adjustable the range is insufficient). My eyes are at the height of the middle of my screen. I'm currently sitting in a groovy chair that I bought in 1967 that happens to be quite comfortable (no, not a bean-bag chair: those are for SmallTalk users). It is like these purple chairs, but with smaller wings, a tamer colour, and better lumbar support: <https://www.houzz.com/photos/2873375/Eclectic-Home-Office-eclectic-home-office-toronto> My wife uses a desk that I also bought in 1967. We replaced the legs and sawed the bottoms off the the new ones to make it appropriate typing height. The window for my work room is beside my desk, not behind my monitor nor behind my back. That's great but sometimes hard to arrange. With a little thought, one might be able to improve ones computer environment significantly. What do you guys find that makes a difference in your physical environment?

On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 06:31:50AM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:

On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 12:16 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

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| Sounds like a decent idea if you only want 1 (!) monitor. | Me - - I went for 4 - - 1900 x 1080 IIRC

I prefer a single monitor with that many pixels: 4 x 1920 x 1080 == UltraHD. I don't really think that multiple UltraHD monitors would help me.

Sorry, even if I could afford such a beast I likely wouldn't be able to read everything on it. I used to use 6 point fonts in spreadsheets to get more on the screen when I 'only' had a 1600 x 1200 monitor but now need to use glasses even with a 10 point font but then with 2 monitors giving me a 3820 x 1080 virtual I've got lots of room.

...

I happen to have a 1920x1200 monitor on my desk too, but I kind of switch modes when switching monitors (they are hooked to diffrent computers). The UltraHD monitor subtends a large arc.

| and for that you MUST use the | nvidia | drivers and that install was a real hoot!

That might be worth a write-up.

Alas I should have written it up when I first did it (2012) but as it was a work spanned over 2 weeks before I got it 'right' I am not sure I was in the right head space to have noted things down.

The lack of support for more than 2 monitors even in linux variants themselves is personally very frustrating. I needed to, again, reestablish this when my main system disk cratered and I needed to return the whole mess for warranty reasons (repair departments seem to only understand M$ and must needs alter things to fit their ideas even after I had asked them NOT to change anything! That was also an interesting odyssey!).

Even after having to do some 'interesting' stuff to get my monitor system working I would recommend such for anyone doing more than trivial work on their systems. The impetus for this thinking was in a report that I ran into in the early 2000s where it was found that office workers were effective in relationship to their amount of screen real estate (the more the better). At that time I was on a 1600 x 1200 and found having room to have multiple windows open was very useful. That was a CRT so when I went to LCD I migrated up a notch.

Presently I use 20 virtual desktops and if there were a browser that would stand up to it I would have an incidence on most of them and likely more than one. Alas even 2 incidences of a browser creates problems. As I have lots of system memory (north of 16 GB installed) there shouldn't be any issues besides sloppy programming in browsers and there isn't.

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| (My system is 3 monitors in a landscape mode and one in a portrait mode. | The vertical one is used a lot when reading pdfs.)

All lined up? The more obvious arrangement would be 2 by 2.

Setup is 1 portrait beside 2 landscape and then a 3rd (lower) also in landscape. Gives lots of room for columns in the lower and enough in the other for some interesting stuff. 2 virtual screen - lower of 3840 x 1080 and the upper of 3000 x 1920 (the pocket of 1920 x 840 does produce some issues).

I helped a friend build and setup a machine about a year ago and we did a pair of 1920x1200 screens side by side, both vertical. That works quite nicely (especially since the Dell U2415 has about 7mm border on the top edge.) You almost don't notice the line down the middle. -- Len Sorensen