Dual Screens

With the arrival of the new workstation a few weeks ago I've been enjoying the benefit of a dual screen setup so it's probably time for a quick overview.

In the picture above you can see my main screen which is a Sony FW900 24" Widescreen CRT and a Dell E173FP 17" LCD to the left. The Dell is their bottom of the range 17" panel that came with the workstation package. The Sony is running at 1920x1200@85Hz and the Dell is at 1280x1024 supplied by a Nvidia Quadro FX1400 graphics card using analogue connections (two DVI-15pin D-sub converters off the card).

This is the first LCD screen I've spent any time with apart from various laptop screens and all I can say is that I'm very impressed with the picture. This is the bottom end of 17" screens with only one analogue 15pin D-sub connection but the colour presentation of the image is very good indeed. I've ran a few tests on the response time of the screen by playing a few fast moving DVD scenes but the panel handled them well enough considering it's cost. Viewing angles are OK but not great. There is a slight colour variation from top to bottom unless you're viewing it from the screen sweet spot. As this panel has no height adjustment I've had to angle it slightly to get a reasonable colour balance when viewing from top to bottom.

I generally use the LCD for Outlook 2003, Windows Explorer, Acrobat etc and leave the main screen for ProEngineer. Unfortunately the version of ProE I'm running doesn't support dual screens so I can't spread the menus across to the 17" panel and even worse it won't support hardware acceleration on the main screen. The workaround is to switch back to "Single Display" before starting ProE. Once ProE is up and running you can then go into "Dual Display" mode in the "Display Properties" and ProE will run happily in accelerated mode. Bit of an arse but I only need to do it once a day (unless ProE crashes). The newer version, ProE Wildfire, does support Dual Screens.

There are various options available in the display drivers depending on how you want to run your screens. I run with "Dual View" which allows the screens to operate at their own resolutions and refresh rates. I keep the windows task bar locked to the main screen and extend the desktop over the two screens. You can then configure the applications for which display you want them to run on. Very neat. You can move the position of the second screen in software by dragging it to the left or right of the main screen. Also, if the screens are of two differing sizes, as mine are, you can juggle the second screen up or down to align the top or bottom of the two screens. Personally I have the smaller second screen placed midway between the top and bottom the larger screen. This means your mouse cursor doesn't accidentally move to the second screen when you try to hit the "Start" button or a menubar along the top of an application. Neat touch.

Can't say it makes me more productive bit it comes in very handy in everyday use. The ability to open a pdf drawing on the LCD while modelling in ProE is a godsend and I'd really miss the second screen if I had to go back to a single display workstation.

If (when) I get a TFT panel for my home setup I think I'd lean towards a larger 20" screen (1600x1200), now that I've experienced the setup at work. The extra screen real-estate is very handy. Secondly, any screen I purchase would have to have height adjustment, this is very important to get the optimum viewing angle to the screen. If you want your screens to seamlessly merge side by side they need to be at 90 degrees to the desk otherwise you'll have a varying gap between the bezels.

Dell have a very tempting offer on a 20" Widescreen panel at £369.30 including VAT and delivery. Hmmm be still my beating heart, that is a very good deal.