Well, I use the relatively large screen for different reasons ... the first of which is that I'm not so young any more, and have difficulty seeing. For years I used several monitors, either on a single computer or on several, but half-a-dozen 20" monitors became a bit "much". I needed the 20" size because of my declining vision, and I found that the 28" LCD display allowed me to present about the same size, despite the altered height-to-width ratio, as on the 20" monitors. I found that using separate computers for separate tasks, rather than multi-tasking as many people like to do, is sometimes more effective and very seldom less so. The solution to data sharing, of course, lies in a low-cost NAS on which data for all the computers that have to use it is stored. I can't cut and paste directly from one computer to the other, but I can still see the data presented on one system and move it via the LAN to another. A big part of whether this works or not is one's working habits, and I've adjusted to this scheme. I'm still adjusting to the single monitor+KVM-switch.

There is one problem I've encountered with my new (I just got it last Monday) HANNS.G 28" monitor, just as a caution to those who may be considering one. The contrast of the image is quite distorted when I look at the monitor from a position perpendicular to the surface of the screen. The contrast is "normal" throughout if I'm viewing from about 30-degrees (pi/6 radians) above the top center of the screen, and it's sharp, well-focused, linear, and everything else one might want, except that I got into the habit of situating my monitors about 7" above the desk surface so that I could look directly at the center of the screen while sitting upright, rather than "hunched-over" as most people seem to prefer. I suspect lthis will take a toll on my lower back, as I spend lots of time in the chair at the computer.


When I bought those 20" CRT's, they cost several k-Bucks each. If "viable" means you don't have to mortgage your house and your first-born, then, yes, you're right.

What I found myself doing, which undoubtedly influenced me to move to one monitor per computer and one computer per task, was that I tended to maximize each application, too, and simply switch from one to the other with <alt>-<TAB> and I could just as easily look at the adjacent monitor attached to the adjacent computer. That was particularly suited to applications that didn't run under Windows.



I also use a 4-port switch, and appreciate that I can use one system running DOS, one running LINUX or another OS, and a couple using different or the same Windows version, depending on what's convenient. There was a time when I had a couple of dozen computers running different *NIX versions and LINUX distributions, and, in some cases running the same app on different OS' just to see what worked better. I'm glad those days are behind me. At one time I even had a fleet of MAC's but, most likely because of the timing relative to the software industry, there were too few applications of the sort I needed, that worked on MAC's. They had a few quirks that I disliked severely, mainly their apparent preoccupation with being toys, as I saw it, so I abandoned them.

I guess one has to fit one's hardware to one's needs and one's comfort zone. I recently reduced my approximately 2500 square feet of space to about 400, including storage. Having recently lost a couple of business partners, I found I didn't need as much space, and now that there are seldom likely to be more than two of us in the lab at any given time, the smaller space won't be a problem. Storage is an issue, though.

RE