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.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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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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James Holsenback <nom### [at] nonecom> wrote:
> 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.

  I remember the time when a graphics card with support for two displays
was luxury (and a selling point). Nowadays they probably don't even make
graphics cards without support for (at least) two monitors. (And this has
been so for a pretty long time now.)

  In fact, many modern graphics cards seem to have support for 3 monitors
(typically with 2 DVI ports and one HDMI port).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 3/7/2012 11:36 AM, 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.)

Yay! My complaining finally had an actual effect on things!  Although as 
far as I'm aware you would have been correct in using the term 
exponential here.  If I recall correctly the growth of many computer 
components has been following a roughly exponential growth pattern.  You 
can see some examples here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#Other_formulations_and_similar_laws

>
>    Monitor screen sizes do not seem to follow this trend, however, and
> seem to grow a lot more linearly.

Interestingly, the above page lists monitors as also improving 
exponentially as measured in pixels per dollar.  I wouldn't have guessed 
this though, since my intuition on the matter was the same as yours.

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Am 07.03.2012 20:57, schrieb James Holsenback:

> 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.

Same here. The only substitute for screen real estate is screen real estate.

With one 24" 16:10 (1920x1200) and one 19" 4:3 (1280x1024) at my 
disposal, I found that trying to work on a single 17" 4:3 display gives 
me claustrophobia these days. No kidding.

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Am 07.03.2012 21:15, schrieb Warp:
> James Holsenback<nom### [at] nonecom>  wrote:
>> 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.
>
>    I remember the time when a graphics card with support for two displays
> was luxury (and a selling point). Nowadays they probably don't even make
> graphics cards without support for (at least) two monitors. (And this has
> been so for a pretty long time now.)

Anyone recall the days when a dual-screen workplace meant plugging in a 
monochrome graphics adapter next to your VGA card?

And yes, I did that back then. It made a nice debug output device - 
Turbo Pascal 6.0 even included native support for that.

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> 19" 4:3 (1280x1024)

  With a 19-inch 4:3 monitor one should not be content with anything
less than 1600x1200 (at 85 Hz if it's a CRT).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 03/07/2012 05:12 PM, Warp wrote:
> clipka<ano### [at] anonymousorg>  wrote:
>> 19" 4:3 (1280x1024)
>
>    With a 19-inch 4:3 monitor one should not be content with anything
> less than 1600x1200 (at 85 Hz if it's a CRT).
>
LOL ... you're the most consummate dissenter I've EVER met ... you slay 
me dude.

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Am 07.03.2012 23:12, schrieb Warp:
> clipka<ano### [at] anonymousorg>  wrote:
>> 19" 4:3 (1280x1024)
>
>    With a 19-inch 4:3 monitor one should not be content with anything
> less than 1600x1200 (at 85 Hz if it's a CRT).

It's okay for a secondary display, given that it's a few years old 
already, and had served me as my primary display before I retired my 17" 
4:3 in favor of the 24" 16:10. (A 1600x1200 would indeed be better 
suited of course, as it would then have the same vertical resolution as 
the primary display, but given that I'm rather short on money these days 
it doesn't warrant buying a new display.)

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You also missed the drop (sic!) in resolution lately: It went all the
way to 1920x1200 (limits of DVI-I bandwidth unless it's a dual link:
(Single) WUXGA (1,920 × 1,200) @ 60 Hz).
But it now is reduced to 1920 x 1080, because this is the resolution
needed by HDTV... you would have a very hard time finding a 1200 now.

Also, DVI is now tagged as obsolet and would be replaced by HDMI (with
identification & all the DRM) and DisplayPort, should the industry
succeeds... (yet, there is DP 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and also DP++ (passive
compatibility with single link DVI), which means the consumers will
still get fooled by naughty sellers: Yes, it's HD-ready... bummer!)

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