Its one of those 'because I can' hacks. Perfectly fine old 15-19 LCD monitors are ~$10 at goodwill type stores, and free if you ask around relatives/friends for old gear.
Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
51–60 of 147 posts
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#52I've used Duet for this in the past. Works great by allowing me to extend my laptop screen with my ipad screen. https://www.duetdisplay.com/
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#53I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
ive always said that going from one screen to two is a big jump in productivity. Comparing things between two windows is a very common task in almost all workloads. However I think three is already too many, and brings something between barely any benefit and a net negative. More than that seems superfluous, even for cctv or stock brokers. Attention can't be split that easily. Personally for most of my working life ive had three, as in two 24" and a laptop, but I usually either just have spotify fullscreen on the laptop all day or turn it off if I can.
As for putting two windows side-by-side on a single screen? I don't know, it always felt clunky to me. A lot of things are designed to be landscape 16:9.
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#54Tablets should have a HDMI/Displayport in so that you can directly use them as displays.
I'd even go one step further: we should have had a standard communications protocol like TCP for all devices. So a display would show up as just another device that we could use to read/write bytes. All devices would have a standard queryable HTTP/HATEOAS self-documenting interface. And HDMI/DisplayPort or USB A/B/C/.../Z would all use the same protocol as gigabit ethernet or Thunderbolt or anything else, so the band…
In fairness, there are standardised protocols for a lot of these things already, even if they're not all part of one giant meta-protocol. Cameras in particular have mostly appeared as a folder full of files, with no need for special drivers, for something like 20 years.
There's definitely no need to invoke a conspiracy for the lack of 'one protocol to rule them all'. It's often hard agreeing on a standard even for a relatively limited topic - trying to agree on one for all electronic communications for all devices is probably impossible.
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#55I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
almost everybody at my job has 2 screens, i'm sorry but i only have one brain
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#56I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
I'm a 1.5 screens at work (laptop + 24" external monitor) and 1 screen at home person. Life has enough distractions.
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#57I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
ive always said that going from one screen to two is a big jump in productivity. Comparing things between two windows is a very common task in almost all workloads. However I think three is already too many, and brings something between barely any benefit and a net negative. More than that seems superfluous, even for cctv or stock brokers. Attention can't be split that easily. Personally for most of my working life i…
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Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#58I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
Doesn't always work this way but:
Smaller Monitor: Comms (email, calendar, slack, etc) -- often times I have this vertical (top email/cal and slack below) and it doubles for viewing dashboards for stats during troubleshooting.
Bigger monitor: Focus work (terminal, development env, etc) - normally split in 3 columns
Laptop Screen: Browsing (research, WebUI interfaces, entertainment, etc)
Re: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#59I don't know how folks can use a ton of screens like this. I had four 32" monitors at one place and it was incredibly overwhelming. I've been rocking a single 27" screen for years. Even that's too big. I prefer 24" screens but it's difficult to get a good one. I can hold context in multiple virtual spaces, and key bindings make switching between them super quick. I guess this is in the same camp as "I don't understan…
What resolution & DPI is I think far more important than how many displays.
I have 4. 1x 1440@27", 1x 1440@24" and 2x1080@24". If I had known 1440@24" would die out, I would have bought 3 of those instead.
For me the ideal would be a 16:10 24" screen with the same density as the 1440 16:9 models. It's the perfect size & resolution for desktop use in programming / engineering. I'd buy 3 of those, but they don't exist from reputable brands.
I don't want a single ultrawide because I like the (narrow) physical borders. It lets me organize stuff just how I like it. It also makes working with different sources easier. My desktop is plugged into everything, but I can put a laptop or embedded board onto one of the side monitors if I need to.
How I've set up mine:
- Middle 1440: Main work, usually fullscreen IDE with 2 columns of files open.
- Left 1440: Documentation, usually 2 windows side by side.
- Top left 1080: Media, usually in the background. Needed chat programs (different customers use different tools) side by side.
- Right 1080: JIRA, task lists, notes, research, running tests, running instances of programs being developed, ...
This avoids me having to use virtual workspaces to layer context. It's like a great big tool wall in a workshop:
The idea is simple: First Order Retrievability. That is, you should never have to move one tool to get to another. That in turn affords the fastest, most efficient way of working.
~Adam SavageRe: Show HN: Use an old tablet as an extra monitor
#60Worth mentioning this discussion that honed on latency specific when using Linux (Wayland) as a host os : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409010 -> https://tuxphones.com/howto-linux-as-second-wireless-display... (2022)