Am I the only one here who ever programmed without a monitor?
I started on TTYs with scrolling yellow paper. When I got to college it was punched cards and line printers. I remember what an improvement it was to move to a system in which I could submit the deck myself, using a remote card reader, instead of handing the deck in at the counter, and waiting for an operator to 1: load the deck into the system, 2: to schedule it to run, and 3: to burse the output and put it in the pickup bin.
Actually, I just wrapped up a project at Monterey Bay Aquarium that’s running one of the pre-release 6 port Eyefinity cards (thanks AMD!). From one card, we’re pushing 5 42" NEC micro-bezel monitors in portrait mode to make one giant, bright display:
The exhibit is live now at Monterey Bay Aquarium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaaIDBEZdW4
How is one video card plus an ugly external powersucking dongle more “simple” than two video cards?
I have 10 engineers working for me and I got them all dual monitors, which they swear by for productivity, but personally I have to admit that I just don’t get it. I’m using a single 22" monitor for development, and even that seems too big for me. I’m happiest with a 14" laptop. Whenever I have tried dual monitors I end up with a sore neck from looking side to side, and sometimes I even feel motion sickness (especially on site like Wikipedia where they don’t limit the width of the text across the screen). I can’t imagine using dual or triple 30" monitors. I’d have to put them on the other side of the room. I’m pretty sure I’m the only software engineer on the planet who would turn down extra screen real-estate.
For those that want to go a little more on the cheap, eVGA has a nice, stackable USB device that allows for multiple monitors. I blogged this a while ago: http://pitadeveloper.com/blog/post/Some-Things-Are-Worth-Paying-For.aspx
Hey Now Jeff,
Great to read about ‘As good as two monitors is, three monitors is even better.’
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
“I plugged it into my system’s nearby rear USB ports which do tend to deliver more power (they’re closer to the power supply, and have short cable paths).”
Jeff, I would love for you to explain to us how a “shorter cable path” delivers “more power”.
Be careful with Synergy, it’s protocol is not secure. You can secure it by sending it over an ssh tunnel though (which is what I do for my Linux/Linux/XP/OS X setup).
Jeff, I think you’ve said before that you use 2048 x 1152 pixel resolution monitors. Is that correct?
When I first heard of Eyefinity, I was excited that card makers were finally taking triple monitor setups seriously.
But, then I learned of the DisplayPort nonsense.
Newegg seems to sell only one DisplayPort monitor. It’s $185 more than a comparable monitor without DisplayPort! So that’s $555 more to get three matching monitors.
The $110 DisplayPort-to-DVI active converter hassle seems to negate the benefits of simplicity and cost-savings that I’d hoped to achieve with an eyefinity card.
Unless you’re a gamer, there’s no reason to care
Whoa…or unless you want to get into OpenCL or DirectCompute programming (which I suspect a lot of your readers will end up wanting to learn, even if they don’t realize it right now). If you are one of us, you definitely want to pay special attention to which triple output video card you upgrade to.
For those questioning dual monitors its awesome for developers.
Main monitor is used for the code editor/Development environment, and the second monitor lets me bring up API documentation which i can read at the same time as viewing my code.
There is a disconnect when you have to switch windows back and forth.
You can also run the program on the second screen allowing you to look at the code while the program is running, and of course, use the debugger on the main screen.
As a teacher I have to write alot of documentation and having my editor open at the same time has also improved my productivity.
I haven’t seen as much value with a 3rd screen yet and probably never will as my desks are not large enough to hold that many.
@Masterplansoftware
Resistance in a wire increases as the length increases. See Ohm’s Law.
@Timothy Boyce:
a) Ok, tell me then how much of a difference in impedance you expect to see in 6" worth of 24 AWG wire as compared to 12" of the same wire.
b) You should probably look at Ohm’s law. It has nothing to do with wire impedance. Or perhaps a lesson in sentence structure and context would suffice?
@Masterplansoftware
USB operates on DC power, so impedance is the same as resistance. Based on a table of resistivity for copper wire I found on google, resistance would increase from 0.0125 ohms to 0.025 ohms for those lengths.
@Timothy Boyce:
And what kind of differences in voltage drop do you expect to find across those two lengths of wire? What effect would they have on current?
Those people talking about how virtual desktops are better or even that a 14" laptop is optimal must not have done the type of development where multiple monitors are so useful. In my setup I normally have my editor, a browser, a few shells, and a DB gui all up and visible at the same time, with many other apps popping in and out over the day as needed. When doing web development there are so many times when I’m rapidly cycling between the editor and the browser that there’s no way that someone with less screen real estate could possibly be more productive than me.
HDMI == DVI. We have a number of dual monitor workstations that use the HDMI out one of the displays. An HDMI to DVI cable is approx $5.
Jan- For example, the HP 2338h costs $239, and has HDMI, and 1920x1080 resolution.
That is not $100 more than the competition (especially factoring in HP’s industrial design and build quality - you can get a very cheap no-name for about $80 less… and exactly what you deserve along with it).
HDMI is not an expensive thing. HDMI and DVI-D are signal-compatible, as Duncansmart says.
On Jeff’s post - HDMI is indeed aimed at the AV market as well as the computer market, but note that HDMI shouldn’t really be thought of as a replacement for S-Video or Component; it’s a digital signal at every level, lacking even DVI’s (in the DVI-A flavor) analog capability.
Pure digital, which is why DVI-D/Mini-DVI and DisplayPort/Mini-DisplayPort adapters are cheap and easy.
(And on the DP-DVI adapters… it’s kinda odd to call the cable “analog”, since DP and DVI-D are digital data. There’s no analog conversion process.
I suspect the cheap one simply requires the DP provide a DVI/HDMI signal, which DP is capable of. I suspect also that the expensive one has it use the native DP signal and processes it into the dual-link DVI.)