A Second Monitor

I have come to a beautiful revelation. I REALLY like big monitors. Better yet, I like multiple widescreen monitors. While in grad school, I lived off of a 15.4" widescreen laptop. Typically, I opened programs half the width of the screen allowing me to have two files, or programs, viewable at once. This worked well. However, when I started work, they gave me another laptop - only 13.nothing inches - and a 21" monitor to use as an extended desktop. This is nice, believe me.

It took a little while to get used to because I had to remember to scan both screens. It was especially weird when I would click on something from the start bar ... and wait for it to open ... and wait. Then, almost giving up, look over to the other monitor to find the program patiently waiting for me. Nice. However, over the last few months I've gotten used to this feature and really like having twice the real estate. I have Outlook and Firefox open on my smaller screen while my work programs are on the larger monitor. Now when I get home and hop onto my 15.4" laptop, it really just feels like I'm missing something.

So, you guessed it. A widescreen monitor (a.k.a Cinema Display) has made it onto my wish list. Can you imagine the power of two widescreen monitors?! I'll be able to, like, have four word documents viewable at once. Yes! ... Four Excel sheets? ... maybe not ALL four ... Well, at the very least I'll be able to watch a TV show from my iTunes library, casually surf YouTube in conjunction with posting comments on my friend's Facebook pages after quickly making sure I still didn't get another email in the last 10 seconds.

At first I thought it would be cool to get Apple's 30" Cinema Display, but then I found out that they actually want both of your arms instead of just one. So... I looked into Dell's equivalent and found they're just as interested in taking just above the elbows as well. So, I might have to wait for one of those *cough* Christmas *cough*. Luckily, I work with a bunch of geeks who pointed me to many web resources for refurbished displays on the cheap. For a petty $190 I could have my own 19" flat panel monitor. Not bad. Actually, I think I'll wait it out until I find a widescreen just my style ... I do believe HP has some nice ones.