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Simple monitor hack.. 3 monitors on their side!

Below is the latest incarnation of my desktop monitor setup... a few things that Ive not seen anyone using that really are working out successfully.

  1. My vertical viewing area goes from 1024 to 1280 pixels which is the same as paying for an expensive XUVGA monitor and video card.
  2. The three monitors side by side equal the same desktop space as two XUVGA monitors at 1/10th the cost.

  3. Three 1024 wide by 1280 monitors actually give better veiwing of web pages and word docs than two WUVGA monitors! See full web pages without having to scroll and complete word docs in print layout.... it makes a BIG difference.




Look closely you will see that there are three Costco princeton monitors on their side! One is set at 90 degrees and the left most two are set at 270 degrees.



Not a real good shot but it shows a flickr page viewed in profile... since most web pages are limited to 800 or 1000 pixels wide you rarely have problems of web pages bleeding over the side of the desktop area, but get the benefit of nearly another half screen of depth to each page viewed. I am doing half the scrolling I did before using this config.


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How to do it?

  1. I've turned my three Princeton monitors on their side.

  2. Removed the stock monitor stands from the Princetons and replaced them with swiveled NeoFlex stands by Ergotron for $49 from CompUSA.

  3. One monitor is set at 90 degrees and the left most 2 are set at 270 degrees.

  4. This is acheived using 3 nvidia PCI video cards nViews "rotation" settings.

How did I come up with the idea?

When setting up the nvidia nView software I saw the rotation settings during the setup and it occured to me that I had not seen anyone use the mode before... so I tried it for a stir! Then I moved a web page to the sideways screen and got it in one second... seeing a whole web page on one screen... the first one I openned was a CNN news page and their layout is basically 1600 pixels maximum height so all but a bit of the page could be seen in every news story I looked at. Its a simple idea but made a big big difference to my computing experience.

Interesting side notes:

  • I found that placing the taskbar in the middle screen at the top is the best fastest and most logical location for navigation.
  • My usage is optimized for left and middle screen for webpage and document vewing and cutting pasting/ editing and the right screen for communications, music player etc allthough I sometimes use all three screens for editing.
  • FYI the pixel dimensions are 3 x 1024wide x 1280 deep or in one sweep 3072 x1280!

Comments

  1. lol, when 3 lcd monitors become cheep ill let you know :P


    im running 2 17" crts, they work better in lanscape as i mainly use photoshop, and work on landscape pages

    center display is for editing, left side is for tools

    whats an added bonus of two monitors is that your eye is forced to move furthur than normal, so it get leff fategued (wierd, but it moving it more makes it less tierd ???)

    ill put a pic up on my site soon

    ReplyDelete
  2. ummm, oops, that site would be the butterd toast one

    ( butterdtoast.blogspot.com )

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?ei=5090&en=c8985a80d74cefc1&ex=1287115200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

    Check out the third image on the left :)

    ReplyDelete

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