The Monitor is the Revolution

I walk around in a state of permanent techno jones. The smallest speed bump leaves me salivating and if G5s ever hit 3.0 GHz or introduce dual core chips I might find myself in some sort of credit card melting seizure. My fervent hope with each new purchase is a completely new computing experience, something that feels revolutionary. It is similar to a golfer trying to buy a golf swing by investing in new clubs every year instead of bothering to take a lesson. Thus far no computer I’ve purchased has given me that truly awe-inspiring computer experience I’ve been craving.  Which isn’t really surprising, my upgrades tend to be fairly incremental so it isn’t as if I’m going from a Quadra 660 AV to a dual 2.7GHz G5 Tower.

Recently I did have the revolutionary computing experience I’ve been craving oh these many years. I had some cash saved up from various projects and decided to blow it on a monitor. Monitors have been consistently low on my list of things to improve because they don’t make your computer any faster, seemingly don’t increase functionality and the purchase eats into the money earmarked for the next computer. I threw all previous reasoning to the wind and decided to go hog wild and splurge on a 20-inch Apple display. When I finally got the thing (the wait seemed interminable) I hooked it up and was blown away.

I wasn’t blown away by the color fidelity or the crispness of the image (well, actually I was but only because my old monitor had become a bit fuzzy) I was shocked by the sheer space of the screen. Screen real estate may not seem like a big deal to casual users (people like me) on the surface but it makes a huge difference in day-to-day use. This surprised me for several reasons.

The first reason is just how much better the net seemed on the larger screen. Most pages are optimized for an 800x600 resolution that was easily achieved on my previous monitor. With the new monitor I was able to, with no difficulty, have two browser windows open side by side and miss nothing. This ability may seem superfluous to some (as it did to me when I had 17” monitor) but it is of unquestionable usefulness when you’re watching a movie or playing a flash game in one window while simultaneously reading, say Apple Matters, in separate browser window.

While initially I didn’t think the monitor was anything but a possibly ill-advised indulgence when I purchased it I noted that it improved my workflow considerably. I write quite a bit and (this piece excepted) generally try to include a fair amount of research when committing my thoughts to pixels. With my previous monitor if I found some salient point on the web that I wanted to include in a column I would find myself flopping betwixt Word and Safari like the goldfish in that annoying video for Epic. Suddenly that hassle was gone. I could devote 50% of screen real estate to writing and 50% to research. That unexpected change made life much easier.

Surprisingly my favorite program, iMovie, benefited not at all. The program is fairly well self contained the version I use doesn’t support drag and drop. Which was a bit of a shock, when doing anything with video you always assume bigger is infinitely better. Final Cut Express is a completely different case, the extra screen space coupled with that program made using FCE much more enjoyable to use.

Seemingly no upgrade is without annoyances. When I received a G5 I missed the interrupt switch on my upgraded Sawtooth and the monitor provided me with an annoyance I didn’t even realize existed. Imagine you’re working diligently on an article and doing a bit of research on a web page. If you take a moment to scroll the web page you can’t simply start typing the article again. You’d think the OS would remember where the cursor was last used and let you simply start typing but the process instead requires another click (or key combo) to reactivate Word. A minor complaint I suppose but one that should be addressed with ever increasing monitor size.

In the end I finally found that revolutionary computer experience I’ve been craving for so long. Not in a faster chip or dual layer burner but with a bigger monitor. The amount of difference a monitor can make is astonishing to me and I suspect others with similar upgrade paths were surprised just how much difference a larger screen makes. At this point I had hoped that my incessant cravings for new technology would finally be fully sated and to some extent they are. I no longer crave a top of line G5, I realize I couldn’t really take advantage of such a machine. On the other hand any idiot can take advantage of a larger screen so I spend my waking time yearning for the thirty-inch model.