Displays of Affection

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Some might think I have more money than sense.  They clearly haven't seen my bank account.  Or my aptitude test results... Anywho, those who truly know me know that I'm a sucker for a big screen.  I love to have gazillions of pixels flung at my retinas like arrows at Nameless.  When I don't have to squint at programs, I work quicker, longer, harder, better, faster, stronger.  The only thing better than a big screen?  Two big screens.  My bedroom studio setup, therefore, looked like this:


Two beautiful 19" Dell TFT LCD screens plugged into my Windows machine; plenty of space for tracks, plugins, and waveforms.  But alas, despite the massive desktop area, all was not well (said the ungrateful little Lord to his maidservant).  I couldn't both screens with my Macbook, where I seem to be making most of my music at the moment, and they didn't seem to be getting much use.  Add to that the fact that they took up a lot of space, on the same platform as 2 different pairs of speakers, 2 x external hard drives and other collected dongles and docks, and you begin to see my quandry...  And so I have recently consolidated all my screens into one easy-to-view 24" widescreen HD Iiyama display, and it's purdy:


The Iiyama B2409HDS boasts a massive 1920x1080 resolution and features DVI, D-Sub and HDMI inputs, so it's plenty versatile.  It even has a couple of speakers built-in, so I can theoretically keep playing my PS3 in full 1080p HD glory if my big telly ever moves, say, out of my bedroom into the living room??!  (as if.)

One of my favourite features is the stand.  As well as being able to rotate left and right and tilt up and down, it sits on a shaft that allows it to actually raise/lower depending on what height you're sitting it.  Kinda reminds me of how Johnny 5 raises up on his cat-tracks to hug Ally Sheedy.  Damn lucky robot.

But by far my favourite feature, one that I enjoyed with the Dell displays, is its ability to rotate its screen orientation from landscape to portrait, which is really useful for working with different apps.  For example, my setup when creating music with Reason involves using my Macbook as the sequencer screen, and the second display in portrait orientation for displaying my equipment rack, which being long and thin lends itself well to a portrait orientation:



Being able to orient the display in portrait also lends itself to other applications, such as writing long documents/screenplays, organising a playlist, viewing a large photo library, or measuring the exact length of an elongated feline memestar:



The display was second hand from a guy on a computer forum I frequent and he sold it for a good price.  I must admit, I experienced slight buyer's remorse after I'd paid for it, just simply because I felt a little guilty about spending out on yet another gadget, but I'm really glad I bought it now, and I reckon after I've managed to sell the old screens off, I'll feel even better.

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