" There is an upper limit, however:"<p>Agreed. I had a 30-inch Dell for about 7 months and eventually downgraded to a 24-inch Dell and I'm much happier.<p>30-inches is more time spent moving your neck around to see the rest of the screen and more space spent taking up your desk, that in my case is only 2 feet deep so being so close to such a large monitor is a bit awkward.
There's a reason why trading floors have three, four, or more monitors per computer. Where I work, most traders have four, but the FX and commodities guys have sometimes as many as eight monitors (one row of four above, one row of four below) tied to two computers at a single desk.
I was blown away a few days ago when PG demoed Viaweb on a rickety mac laptop with a 12 inch screen. It just didn't make sense to me.<p>Two of the biggest reasons to get a MacBookPro:<p>1. The screen is best in show.<p>2. The video card can power an external 30 inch monitor.
This seems like it should have been studied long ago. I guess it takes a while for academia to get new monitors (and notice that they have bigger ones available).
Here's to hoping my bosses read this. There are so many engineers here working on single 18 or 19 inch monitors it's not even funny. I consider myself lucky to have two 19 inchers...<p>But it's still very cramped compared to my set up at home.<p>Anyone know where the study is? I want to know if they did widescreen vs. flatscreen, or if they tried out more than 2, and what 'jobs' they had the subjects do.
Yeah, a 26'' monitor would give you no benefit over a 24'' monitor as it likely has the same resolution. If you want an increase in resolution you have to go to 30''. I'd try the same task again with a 24'' and a 30'' and see if there are any differences.
My boss is great about monitors, and I even work in academia. He uses a 30" LCD (as do two other professors) and most of our other faculty/staff (with the exception of the admin staff) have at least two 19"s or larger.
I use three with 3, with x2vnc. Linux in the middle on a 22", os x on the right on a 19, and windows on the left with a 19. It works wonderfully and I have instant access to multiple os's and browsers.
> tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets<p>The limiting factor in productivity for knowledge workers, excluding those working with graphics, is not mechanical tasks like copying and pasting.<p>This study is probably valid if you answer phones in a call center. I doubt it has much bearing if you spend most of your time thinking when in front of the monitor.