Re: what do you guys use for monitor?

[jhourcle]

On my desk at work, I currently have a 23" Apple Cinema Display (ADC) flat panel. (hand me down from one of the folks who did visualization work ... well, they put it on a server, and I swapped my 20" w/ it when no one was looking, as I'm one of the few who still has a machine w/ an ADC video card in it)

At home, I typically just the laptop's display, for everyday coding -- if I start doing graphics layout work, I have a 30" Apple display, but it's just too damned big for normal everyday work -- I actually have it boxed up after we used it for displaying a slideshow at a funeral, and haven't unpacked it.

I actually _do_not_ like Apple's 'just one cable' connection on their monitors -- the cable pigtails out with only a few inches, so you have to keep the power brick near the computer -- this can be a PITA if you have to keep switching the display between machines (cause it's just not worth paying for a DVI-DL KVM), and especially annoying with my laptop, as I tend to move it around on the desk depending on what I'm doing, but I'm forced to keep repositioning the brick around.

oh ... and the power connection for the brick is the OPPOSITE gender of the connection for a Mac Mini ... I'm lucky I didn't burn out something when I was rushing to connect everything up before the funeral (note -- the mini can't drive the full resolution, but they had pre-generated the movie at DVD resolutions, so it didn't matter anyway)

...

If I were going to get a monitor just for programming ... I'd probably look at something much, much cheaper than the setups I use -- you don't need high refresh rates or even all that high of contrast -- so long as text is legible, it's fine. Higher resolution might allow you to bring up more windows at once, but unless you're working off a laptop w/ only one video port, I'd probably get two smaller displays (19 to 21" range) rather than a larger one (23" to 24") ... the price points for the 30" displays just aren't worth it for people unless you're dealing with one of those rare issues where you need everything in one window, which I've never come across when programing.