When you spend your entire day working at the computer, there are certain peripherals that matter a lot. Having the right ones can make you more productive and a whole lot happier on a daily basis. Having the wrong ones can make it unpleasant or even painful to do your job.
The first isn’t even an electronic component. It’s your chair. A comfortable chair that fits you properly is a must. Otherwise you end up with back pain or worse. The second (unless you’ve switched to speech recognition and dictation for composing your documents) is a good keyboard. Back in the 1990s, when I first started writing full time, I found myself suffering from repetitive stress injury (RSI) to the extent that I could only type for a few minutes at a time without pain in my wrists and thumbs. That’s when Tom bought me my first ergonomic keyboard. The first couple of days, I hated it. Within a couple of weeks, I was back up to speed (80-90 wpm) and the pain was all gone. I’ve had only ergo keyboards since, and I’ve never had a recurrence.
The third important element is your monitor(s). My desktop is, after all, where I "live" for many hours per day. I’ve worked with bad or dying monitors many times in the past. When your display is too dim, too bright, unsharp, or won’t adjust to the height and angle you need, you may not even realize what the problem is – but you will notice that you don’t enjoy working.
I’ve been a multi-monitor fan since Windows 2000. Just as in pre-computer days I preferred a big physical desk on which I could spread out lots of papers, open reference books, notes, etc., I like having plenty of screen real estate now so I can keep all my open windows in view without having to pile them on top of one another and click to see each. For the past several years, I had been using three Samsung SyncMaster monitors on each of my main computers (the upstairs office and the downstairs office). The multiple 19 and 20 inch monitors provided a very decent workspace at a fraction of the cost of larger monitors. And for what I usually do, working on text docs, the display quality was plenty good.
Lately, though, I’ve gotten back into photography. And I started to get a hankering for a monitor better suited to viewing and editing my photos. I looked at HP’s current series for a couple of reasons. A while back, we bought the HP TouchSmart to be our kitchen computer. The built in 20 inch monitor, with its glossy finish and optimized to display TV programs, movies and photos through Vista Media Center, is quite impressive. In fact, my son was so impressed with it that he went out and bought the 22 inch HP 2207. It’s the same basic type of monitor without the touch element. He raved about the beautiful display quality – and he’s not given to raving. Granted, he was replacing an old CRT so the difference was especially dramatic, but when I saw the HP, I fell in love too. And a nice bonus is that it pivots to portrait mode, which I thought would be handy for viewing photos taken with a vertical orientation.
With my birthday coming up, I decided what I wanted was a new monitor. Then we had a meeting of a local government committee to which I belong at our house and the assistant city manager notified me that she wanted to give a PowerPoint presentation. One option would have been to show it on the main Media Center computer attached to the widescreen TV – but our media room isn’t really set up to accommodate the ten people who would be attending. I said to Tom that I wished I had a large monitor we could set up at the table. He said "go buy one." He didn’t have to tell me twice. So, thanks to the bond committee, I got my birthday present a little early.
I knew exactly what I wanted, but when I got to Best Buy, the salesman tried to tempt me with a 24 inch Samsung that was $100 less. I like to save money, but I knew, from all those Samsungs I had at home, that I wouldn’t be happy with the non-glossy surface that is almost impossible to get clean if you happen to sneeze on it or something. So I spent the extra hundred and came back with the HP 2408, the 24 inch version of my son’s monitor. It performed fine for the meeting, and then I gave it a permanent home on my desk, replacing my 20 inch middle monitor.
New monitor setup, with the 24 inch HP in the middle
I had to go back to Best Buy to get a DVI to HDMI adapter since the HP has only analog and HDMI inputs, but once I got it hooked up, I was just stunned at the picture. I have a photo of a bright red cardinal as my wallpaper, and that bird was rendered in such sharp detail and brilliant color that I thought he was going to fly right out of the screen.
The color and detail in the bird on my wallpaper makes him look as if he’s ready to fly out of the screen
When you install the software that comes with it, an HP Display option is added to the context menu when you right click the desktop. A particularly handy feature is the ability to select from several preset viewing modes, optimized for text, movies, photos or gaming. You can create custom viewing modes, too.
The HP My Display menu lets you quickly select a preset viewing mode to optimize the display for what you’re viewing
As for the pivot feature that I thought would be so useful, I’m not so sure. It’s easy enough to pivot the screen, but with multiple monitors there’s a problem – when you pivot the big screen, the displays on the two side screens turn on their sides. Oops. And the big 24 incher, pivoted, is so tall I have to tilt my head back to see the top half of it. I may not be using that feature much after all, but that doesn’t matter since I can place two full size windows of a Word doc and a browser side by side on the monitor, not have to scroll horizontally in either, and still have room at the edge for the Vista sidebar.
Pivoted to portrait mode, the monitor is way too tall for me
What is nice is the ability to adjust both the height and viewing angle just the way I want it. I’m short, so the monitors with a fixed height stand are usually too tall for me. The hinged stand on this one lets me bring it all the way down so that the bottom of the bezel is resting on the desk, if I wanted (I like it with the bottom about an inch off the desk). Even with many of those that adjust, they won’t go down as far as I prefer.
But it’s the quality of the display that really dazzles. I remember my reaction the first time I saw the original 30 inch Apple Cinema monitor. I’m not a Mac person, but oh, I wanted that monitor (which was $1999). The HP has the same brilliance and clarity, with slightly less space, for less than a fourth that price. It’s a joy just to sit here in front of the screen all day now.
After seeing mine each time he walked past my desk for almost a week, Tom broke down and got one of his own (the 22 inch), finally replacing the ancient 21 inch CRT that he’s been hanging onto forever. That was the last CRT we had in the house, and I’m not sorry to see it go.
What you see is what you get, and I’m glad I got the HP.
UPDATE: 09/05:
I discovered how to pivot the middle monitor without messing up the side displays. If you disable Auto Pivot and select the 90 degree pivot manually through the HP My Display settings, the other monitors remain normal while the HP pivots. Just click Options | Auto Pivot and uncheck the "Enable Auto Pivot" checkbox.
Disabling auto pivot fixes the problem of the secondary displays turning sidewise when you pivot the HP monitor
deb@shinder.net
