Dual monitor setup with Samsung and ViewSonic
I’ve had a 22″ Samsung for quite a while now but at work I have a dual monitor setup and that is very neat when doing web development as you can dedicate one screen to (insert your favourite IDE here) and one to a browser (mostly ie6 since that sucker is a real time gobbler).
So I decided to purchase a second screen for my home setup that I wanted to put in a vertical position. The reason being that I hate excessive scrolling. At this point my favourite computer dealer didn’t have a second Samsung in stock so I had to choose between Acer and ViewSonic. I chose a ViewSonic 19″ because I had heard some good stuff about them. So I finally have the setup finished and fire up the system and the image quality of the ViewSonic is just horrible. Total confusion, why, what (the hell)? I tilt my head 90 degrees and voila the image quality is fine, comparable to the Samsung.
The thing is apparently optimized to be viewed horizontally, I felt like an idiot. Should I have known something like this? It seems like I’m definitely not a hardware geek anyway that is for sure.
I check out my horizontally positioned Samsung in the same way. Yes, the quality loss is there too but not at all with the same magnitude as the ViewSonic. Having the Samsung in a vertical position would actually be quite OK if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t want that. I want it as the primary working screen because it has a larger total area. So now I sit here with two widescreens positioned horizontally, I have to physically lift my mouse once in order to to go from one side to the other because of space constraints.
If you have to choose between Samsung and ViewSonic, choose Samsung.