Mac Musings

Living Large

or The Joy of Pixels

Dan Knight - 31 August 1998

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A big screen will absolutely spoil you.

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 with 22 rows of 23 columns (or vice versa) of text. Then came a Commodore 64 with 25 rows of 40 characters - and 320x200 color graphics.

My next stop was an 8 MHz MS-DOS computer with 320x200 CGA graphics, which I eventually upgraded to 640x350 EGA video.

Then I got my first Mac.

It was just a little "platinum" Plus with 1 MB RAM, a chunky keyboard, a blocky mouse, and a 512 x 342 pixel screen. But with the right cable and software, I could use it with my DeskJet. And with ATM, I could use Postscript fonts. Gorgeous output, albeit very, very slow.

I did some impressive research and writing on that 9" monitor. I eventually got a Brainstorm upgrade, allowing my Plus to run at 16 MHz.

But then I got a job as a book designer (page design, not covers). Our workhorse was a IIci with 8 MB RAM, an 80 MB hard drive, and an Apple Two-Page Display. This allowed us to see two book pages side-by-side at a large enough size to read the text (about 120-125% on Quark or FrameMaker).

Needless to say, this spoiled me. I found myself less drawn to the Plus with its tiny little screen. And it was slow.

Not too much later, I graduated to a Centris 610 with an Apple 14" color monitor 640 x 480 pixels and 16-bits. Much better than the Plus, and twice as fast as the IIci at work.

Sure, the screen was a bit small, but it was color. I could live with it.

Over time we upgraded computers at work until all the designers had Power Macs and 20" color monitors. This was the life, running at 1152 x 870 pixels. (A few older monitors "only" supported 1024 x 768.)

With the rise of the internet, I learned to surf with Netscape filling half my screen and whatever file I was copying data to (Web Checker, email, spreadsheet, web pages under construction, etc.) in the other half. What a great way to work!

In fact, I ended up running my Apple Multiple Scan 20 at 1280 x 960 (twice the height and width of my home screen), then 1280 x 1024. Now I have a Sony 20" monitor (Multiscan 500PS), which is even sharper at that setting.

It spoils you.

Just look at how much I can see at once (reduced to fit):

At home, I recently bought a Umax SuperMac J700 and a Nokia 447Z 17" color monitor. It's a very nice combination, but the monitor gets fuzzy past 1024 x 768.

That's a lot of pixels, right? Not when you're used to 20% more width and 25% more height. All the windows that fit side-by-side at work overlap at home.

It just isn't the same.

My advice: don't play around with bigger monitors. They'll seduce you, just like faster computers. They'll spoil you with more pixels, more information, more room to multitask.

Unless your budget permits, steer clear of the large monitors.

Sooner or later, they'll get you. LEM

Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986, sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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