On 03/07/2012 02:36 PM, Warp wrote:
>    It's a common phenomenon that things like hard drive sizes, RAM sizes
> and processor speeds tend to grow at a superlinear rate over time in
> home computers. (I won't say "exponential" because someone recently
> complained about that, and I don't have hard data to back up that claim.)
> Very typically, for example, each new hard drive one buys tends to be
> larger than the combined sizes of all hard drives that person has bought
> in the past. (I'm of course talking about the average computer user rather
> than those who buy hard drives like candy, eg. because they need them for
> multimedia projects or something.)
>
>    Monitor screen sizes do not seem to follow this trend, however, and
> seem to grow a lot more linearly.
>
>    The very first monitor I owned (which I bought with my own money, and
> hence was fully mine) was a 15-inch monitor. The next one was a 17-inch,
> and the next one a 19-inch monitor (all of them CRTs). I recently put that
> latter one out of its misery and replaced it with a 24-inch LED monitor.
> (Although this last one is a 19:6 monitor while all the previous ones were
> 4:3, this last one is a bit larger even on the vertical dimension than the
> old 19-inch one.)
>
>    While I skipped the 21-inch step in between the last two, the growth has
> nevertheless been very linear. (In fact, I had the 19-inch monitor for quite
> a long time. I did not want to jump to LCDs before they had fully matured.
> Finally I decided it was time. While this has a few drawbacks compared to
> my good old 19-inch CRT, I'm quite happy with it. It's also great for
> watching movies and playing games. The difference in size and aspect ratio
> is just amazing.)
>
>    Physical weight has been more varied. The weight clearly increased with
> monitor size, but then had a huge drop with the last one. (The 19-inch CRT
> is so heavy that you could break your back trying to carry it, while this
> 24-inch LED monitor is so light that you can *easily* carry it with one
> hand.)
>

Pretty much the path I took as well ... one big difference! At first I 
thought it was absurd to have two displays, but now I find I couldn't 
even imagine settling for just one display. The extra "real estate" is a 
must for development work.

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