I put it this way because I always thought about LCD monitors as one of those unjustifiable gadgets that you wouldn’t spend money on but you will be so happy to receive them as a Christmas present, and that’s what somehow happened to me at work this year.

The deal was like that, the old CRT is now looking blur so we’ll replace with an LCD. But I had many benefits of my CRT setup that I couldn’t give up:

  • The view width: I was using two CRTs, a replacement of both is out of question which is very useful; you know, reading long line log files, showing two text files for comparison side by side, and not to mention software with side panels and tools in particular Visual Studio.
  • The view height: I used to push my CRT to its limits especially on the vertical sync, this allowed me more lines. I became used to showing multiple lines in the task bar, this gives me direct access to more quick launch links, shows me more of the active tasks without shrinking the title to a sometimes useless icon, shows more of the resident processes icons; I don’t like the auto hide of inactive function, and simply showing the clock on multiple lines is cool. Also I like to see more lines when reviewing a couple of years old code. Anyway, having an LCD with 1280 pixels vertically was also out of question.

So the trade-off was clear, the closest equivalence of a 2 CRTs 19″ each is a single 24″ wide LCD which achieve the same vertical centimeters and a fairly close width. Too much for a Christmas gift. So I got a 22″; Acer 2216w with some extra letters not important for a CRT veteran.

New things I learned from my new LCD are staggering; they make higher DPI now so looking for the same vertical centimeters doesn’t make sense anymore, go by pixels. The space you gain on your desktop is really important. And my eyes now for sure need a checkup.