Dual 19in's or one 24in Widescreen

thedoc46

thedoc46

thedoc46

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I am / was very close to selling my two 19in lcd's and going for one 24in widescreen. But now I'm thinking should I?

For productivity you really can't beat two screens. Especially as both are the same make and model, and both sit right next to each other.. I can be browsing on one and playing iTunes on the other... Or writing a word doc whilst my email client is open on the other..

For gaming, it still seems that's there's work to be done in a single widescreen. Not all games natively support WS even the new ones.. However I suspect that this will change with all future games. Plus the added resource you need to run at 1900x1200 as appose to 1280x1024.. Obviously for the games that do run in WS, the experience would be much more pleasant.

Viewing slideshow pics does seem to be much nicer on a widescreen given its size. But then again I have a PS3 on a 42inch Plasma to do this should I want to create a slideshow. Editing pics better or not? You can have all your thumbnails on one screen and the main pic you are editing on the other screen.

So really what I'm here for is to hear from people that have gone from dual 19in's to one 24inch widescreen. What were your final thoughts? A good move or something you've reverted back to..

Part of me wants to make the move, but the othe part is saying. look you've got your PS3 and 360 for gaming on a 42inch WS, leave the PC for productivity, and the dual 19in's fit the bill perfectly for that.

Oh and the last thing is I'll never 'ever' be watching movies on my PC.. Just the occasional bit of gaming, surfing, and whatever else we all do on our machines...
 
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I've got two non widescreen 19" screens atm, I do prefer my widescreen for most things. But I still love this dual screen setup so much better than one screen, epecially when your doing work. I did find though that using a widescreen was not that bad as you can still fit a lot on the screen.

The only let down with none widescreens is that gaming is not as good as it is on my 22" widescreen.

I'm thinking of setting up a quad screen setup as I have got the monitors. 1 x 22", 2 x 19" and I should be buying a 37" for my room soon so I will have the best of both worlds in terms of desktop space and gaming if I do set it up.

All I need is a crossfire setup to run all that lol.
 
I'm in a similar situation, two 19" Samsung panels and becoming increasingly tempted to go 24". Anyone made the switch?
 
I would stick to 2 19" personally, you've already said you find the dual screenage useful, you're basically downsizing your desktop space going to a 24", it's not really worth it unless you're playing games/watching videos/need to see a lot on a single screen at once e.g large photos.
 
Why not buy a 24" and use it in a dual monitor set up with a 19"? That's what I did when I bought my 24".
 
I find editing photos on one larger monitor than two smaller ones much more pleasant. Essentially because its hard to edit a photo when it's split across two screens, and even if you put all of your toolbars or history etc on the other screen, you're having to go further to hit buttons, resulting in slower use. It's nice to just have everything there close by.
 
Buy the 24"
There is enough space to have word side by side with a decent sized window for browsing the web aswell as a corner for msn :p

Dual screens is cool, but one screen offering nearly double the amount of pixels wins every time.
 
Lummox said:
Why not buy a 24" and use it in a dual monitor set up with a 19"? That's what I did when I bought my 24".
Click to expand...

yep thats what I'd do, if it was a choice between only having one 24" or two 19" panels then I go for the two 19"ers, I just find having a dual (or triple in my case) too useful, and the benefits for me far out way having a single larger screen, anyway like I said I paired my old 19" with my 24" anyway and I suggest you consider doing the same.
 
i was in between either good dual 20's, a top of the range single 22" or a cheaper single 24"

in the end i went for the cheap 24" (samsung 245B) and i'm very happy with it. I edit HD footage so i needed the true 1920x1080 range for playback which the others don't have. My second choice would have been a top of the range 22".

I would say also that two screens use double the electricity of a single screen. Which when they're on all day everyday like mine really becomes a factor.

One day i hope to add a second screen (probably a 20") so i can run dual applications like Photoshop and After Effects (photoshop on the 20", AE on the 24") - but i don't need them just yet.
 
I have 2 x 19" screens, I recently had just the single 19", i thought about getitng a single 24", then found an identicle 19" on ebay for £50, made the choice a lot easier :D
 
Lummox said:
Why not buy a 24" and use it in a dual monitor set up with a 19"? That's what I did when I bought my 24".
Click to expand...

I am thinking of doing exactly this but I'm wondering what the resolution of each will do, eg does it crop the res of the larger screen or mean that the smaller screen has to be scrolled to see the whole desktop? Or is there some clever wizardry to let each screen have its own native resoltion?
 
stuart38 said:
I am thinking of doing exactly this but I'm wondering what the resolution of each will do, eg does it crop the res of the larger screen or mean that the smaller screen has to be scrolled to see the whole desktop? Or is there some clever wizardry to let each screen have its own native resoltion?
Click to expand...

the screens will keep their own native res, no clever wizardry, windows has supported this since windows98 :).
 
i would personally stick with duals. especially if you say you find them useful for productivity. my flatmate has a 24" and i have dual 17"s. although you can split it nicely into 4 corners or half n half it is actually less room and i really like duals as it kind of seperates your work more and is easier to keep control of all thats going on, + when gaming you can have your music or ventrilo etc on the other screen to see whats going on.

the only problem with dual screens is whenever women come back the first question is always, "why do you have two computers".

i would only switch to 24" if your gonna be watching a lot of movies or playing xbox off your monitor.
 
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