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21" LCD monitor or 2x19" LCD screens?

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My ten ton, hernia inducing Mitsubishi 21" CRT monitor doesn't seem quite as sharp as I like it to be.

Although it may be fine for most folks' needs, seeing as I'm running it at an eye squinting 1600x1200 resolution and spending the greater part of the say looking at the thing, I think it may be time to dig deep into my savings and get a sharp LCD monitor.

Looking through the price lists, I see that a decent 21" LCD screen capable of producing 1600 x 1200 resolution is going to hit my wallet at a hefty £700 - more than twice the price of two hotly reviewed 19" LCD screens!

So, is anyone here using two screens together? (I'm running an Athlon 2800/XP/gig RAM)

What's the plus points/minus points?
What's a decent graphics card for a twin screen set up? (I'm not a huge gamer although as a designer I need something with a bit of pixel shifting capabilities).

Opinions, recommendations and advice please!
 
i believe a man like Wolfie is a two-screen kind of a guy..

i've briefly used two screeners in the past and to be honest i just found the whole thing a headfuck, but i'm sure that would have passed
 
I'd be very wary of buying an LCD screen without spending a fortune on them.

- I had a 19" Sony LCD delivered today - hoping that it'd cope fine with such simple things as, um, scrolling down web pages without much hassle, moving pictures around and I'm afraid to say that I was actually feeling nausious after only 20 minutes - the shudder and jerking on the screen was unbelievable.

Okay, it was only (only!! ha ha) 300 quid, but what with the price falls in LCD's recently and a reputable brand I thought it would be fine.

I ended up giving it to the person who sits opposite me instead, and putting my desk bending 19" CRT back in it's place.

Oh - and I did tell her that it was making me feel ill - but she doesn't do nearly as much scrolling through forums as I do :o

So if you do decide to go for the LCD's - make sure you see them in action first before parting with your hard earned.
 
find it difficult to photoshop and illustrator with out two screens, if i have a single screen i gotta tank up the res' and hit 'F'.

dual monitors = double plus good if you use photoshop :)










(got hte liberty of two 21" TFTs at work :cool: and maybe a third come CS2 and some new RIP :D)
 
dogmatique said:
I'd be very wary of buying an LCD screen without spending a fortune on them.

- I had a 19" Sony LCD delivered today - hoping that it'd cope fine with such simple things as, um, scrolling down web pages without much hassle, moving pictures around and I'm afraid to say that I was actually feeling nausious after only 20 minutes - the shudder and jerking on the screen was unbelievable.

Okay, it was only (only!! ha ha) 300 quid, but what with the price falls in LCD's recently and a reputable brand I thought it would be fine.

I ended up giving it to the person who sits opposite me instead, and putting my desk bending 19" CRT back in it's place.

Oh - and I did tell her that it was making me feel ill - but she doesn't do nearly as much scrolling through forums as I do :o

So if you do decide to go for the LCD's - make sure you see them in action first before parting with your hard earned.
Click to expand...
That sounds like a driver issue to me.
 
dogmatique said:
Yeah, I thought so too... installed the latest ones, still really bad.
Click to expand...
That's odd: Eme's just taken delivery of a relatively cheap Viewsonic 19" screen and it looks fan-bloody-tastic!
 
I've got a 19" LCD and a smaller 17" LCD which is a bit weird as I think you have to run them at different resolutions to get them to 'flow' into each other perfectly.

Having said that for any development/design work I find it absolutely essential now, I did some contract work recently and found the single poxy 17" they sat me in front of to be nothing more than an insult!

Not sure what dual-head card I'm using but you can acheive the same with two graphics cards can't you? Although it's harder to set up or something.

for sure 2 screens is the way forward
 
Go for 2 screens. - you'll struggle to go back to a single monitor setup. However, Dont forget that LCD monitors only work at a single resolution - is it's 1280 x1024 - you can't push it up to 1600x1200 like you can a CRT monitor.

I have a spare pair of Philips 180p monitors They've probably had less than a years use, (Mrs Funky ditched the desktop and got a laptop recently) and a Matrox dual head card that I've been procrastinating about chucking at Ebay. If you reckon these could interest you, drop me a PM.
 
Two monitors are great for a lot of things, pain in the arse for others. If you're doing a lot of image manipulation you may well be better off with one big monitor, unless you always have shitloads of palletes open, in which case go for two. Dual monitors are the dog's bollocks for video editing or web design (HTML in one, preview in t'other or any number of other permutations). For desktoppy stuff and web browsing two monitors are almost always a long way better than one biggun. You can keep mail, IM and other gubbins on one and browse on the other, work on a word document on one and research crap on google on the other, whatever. I feel distinctly claustrophobic without my second (and third) monitors, even on a fuck-off great 23" Apple Cinema display at 1920x1200. For pixels-per-pound, you can't beat a pair of reasonably-priced 19inchers.
 
I think the more screens the better. Two nineteens is tonnes better than one 21. Most decent cards will run 2 with a y lead.

I do tonnes of video editing and I am quite happy with 5 (five!) screens. I use an old quad head matrox in a pci slot and a g force 3 in the agp slot. I scrounged most of the monitors, one 21, 2 19s, a seventeen and a fifteen and they work just fine together... shame about the leccy bill !

TFTs may replace some of the tubes soon, but watch out, I think TFTs are a bit crap for video / photo work as thay do sokme weird things to the picture to my eyes.
 
monitorsgood.jpg


See, cool....
 
I have a really shit 15" CRT monitor attached to my desktop machine, and a really nice laptop with a 12" TFT screen. I run two different setups. For day-to-day use, I run them using Synergy, so that both computers are controlled by one keyboard and mouse. When programming for a long period of time, I connect the monitor to my laptop, and run a dual-display system, with a debug environment on one screen and code window on the other. It really suits my needs (I'm used to 1024x768 on both screens). I would definitely go for two 19" screens. Personal preference that is though.

If you have a couple of spare laptops, you can get some software which lets you treat them like extra screens. I'm useless though, I can't remember what the software is called.
 
Edit to add: a lot of dual-displays I've seen around run matrox dual-head graphics cards. Some places have these lying around for cheap (check turn-key's clearance corner & b-stock, also ebay). You might find your current card has two ports already (one may be a DVI, the other D-SUB). If that is the case, you won't need another card, just a DVI---> D-SUB converter, if the monitors only accept analog input.
 
If they still made them, i'd highly recommend Aoc's 18" LCD screens, but alas they only make 17" and 19" now, and it was cheap compared to the rest of the competition too. At some point in the future when funds are available i'm considering selling it on and buying two 17" or 19" screens, for the sake of trying to handle too many music production windows at once. Although i've never used a dual screen setup before, it does seem slightly daunting, and try and look for models that have very thin 'rims' around the edge, so theres as little space as possible between the two screens, hopefully that'll be a bit less of a headfuck...

*Dreams over an apple 30" widescreen monitor* :D
 
Yep, as everyone is saying, go for the double screens.

The other added bonus is redundancy. If one screen conks out, you know you've got a backup...
 
I've got dual monitors at home, one 17" LCD, one 19" CRT, means i can run the same res on both of them, having two monitors is seriously addictive, and is great for running complicated apps like photoshop or writing code.

Go for the dual monitors.
 
Multiple screens every time.

I'm running 2 19" CRTs (can't afford anything else) and for stuff like Cubase/other audio editing packages it's pretty much essential.
 
editor said:
So, is anyone here using two screens together? (I'm running an Athlon 2800/XP/gig RAM)

What's the plus points/minus points?
What's a decent graphics card for a twin screen set up? (I'm not a huge gamer although as a designer I need something with a bit of pixel shifting capabilities).

Opinions, recommendations and advice please!
Click to expand...
I use two screens: a (desk hogging) 23" CRT Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 230 SB + an old 17" CRT Dell monitor from my old PC. I have roughly the same set up as you (2800+/XP/512ram) and have an ATI 9700pro graphics card which works fine.

I can't really think of any downsides at all - I don't think I'd want to go back to one screen now having had two for a while. You have so much more space and can run a full screen application on one and a bunch of windows on another. I have a digital TV card so I sometimes watch TV on one screen and surf the net or chat on irc etc on the other.

(nb - I have just had a thought: my video card has one analogue and one digital output. I don't know if this makes a lot of difference to the set ups and if you can convert one of these.)

edit: I'd recommend spending most money on getting one very high quality screen. I went for a CRT as they have fast response times for gaming - I'd expect you'd want something with the best image quality and colours for your photography and graphics work? I don't really care that my second screen is a bit ropey as I can stick all the rubbish/low-perfomance stuff on it - its more like a 'note-pad'. Then again maybe you want two identically specced screens if you are doing graphics/photography/layouts on both.
 
OK: I'm convinced that twin screens are the way to go - and after seeing the dazzlingly crisp display on Eme's new monitor, I'm going to go for two ViewSonic VX910 units.

I'm not that big on gaming, so would I be better off getting something like a Matrox dual head graphics cards to keep things simple?

My PC box is already stuffed full of cards, so I'm thinking that I'd be better off getting just the one combo card rather two.

Opinions?
And does the Matrox card offer any useful dedicated software that makes it a better choice than two separate cards?
 
Well one graphics card would probably use far less resources than have two. Have a look round the back of you computer to make sure you don't already have two display connections. A lot of the cards nowadays do have two, one analog, one digital. You can pick up the matrox dual head cards on ebay. Try to get one of the ones with dual-digital/DVI outputs if those monitors have a digital connection.
 
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