Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#391

Post by sevensor »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #284
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

I had a similar setup at a previous job -- one of the early 39" TVs. It could only drive 4k at 30Hz, but for staring at text, nothing could beat it. It takes a good tiling window manager to get the most out of this setup. By the same token, a good tiling WM also makes a tiny little netbook screen feel much bigger. So I guess what I'm really saying is, use a tiling WM!

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#392

Post by mulmen »

auggierose wrote: post #313
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first.

In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent.

Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect that resolution. I switched to a 43” 4k monitor (technically more pixels) and MacOS drives it fine.

My experience with MacOS is not “it just works” unless you are doing something Apple already predicted. That’s fine for me, I just wish they still sold a reasonable monitor themselves so I could be assured it would work properly.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#393

Post by huy-nguyen »

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #388

Wow $2000 USD for a monitor? I thought I was pushing it yesterday when I got a new 27' monitor for $200. I don't think as programmers we need anything more than a 27' inch 1080p. What am I missing? I don't think it's worth the expense. On another note, that mustard yellow as the background color is an eyesore.

$200 is quite cheap for a 27” monitor. A good non-gaming 1440p 27” costs about $300-400 not on sale.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#394

Post by udp »

freeqaz wrote: post #343
bredren wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. I have a pal with an aging 5k imac that he wishes he could use only as a monitor with a new mac mini. It seems display tech in imac is severely discounted in order to sell the whole thing. And it does seem to break the pricing if you don't see them as different products offering value for different configurations. Bringing back target mode, or allowing the iMac to act as an external monito…

I bet somebody could make a business refurbishing those old 5K iMacs into usable monitors. Either yank the panel into a new case w/ a custom board to drive the display, or hack an input into the existing system (maybe with a minimal booting OS). Either way, that'd be a cool product to see and seems like a decent side hustle to get some $. :)

I recently bought a 2015 27” 5K (5120x2880) iMac core i5 for cheap, put in an SSD, and upped the RAM to 24 GB. It handles everything I can throw at it as a developer (albeit not a game developer, just “full stack” web/java/node/k8s) and the screen is just incredible.

The SSD upgrade is not for the faint hearted, however. I used the iFixit kit with the provided “tools”, and lifting off 27” of extremely expensive and heavy glass that sounded like it might crack at any moment was not exactly fun. Having said that - I would do it again in a heartbeat to get another computer/display like this for the price I paid.

With regards to scaling: I have had zero problems with either my rMBP (since 2013) or this iMac, when in macOS running at high resolution. Zero. As soon as I boot Windows or Linux, however, it’s basically unusable unless I turn the resolution down.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#395

Post by okasaki »

gorgoiler wrote: post #291
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

Which display in particular are you recommending, and what is the latency like?

I use Samsung 4k TV's (55in and 43in) at work and home and the experience is absolutely fantastic. In game mode the latency is reported to be 11ms and there's no difference visible to me compared to 60hz computer monitors.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#397

Post by distances »

DavidVoid wrote: post #307
pmiller2 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... too opinionated for my liking. Put yourself in the mindset of a typography geek. Then, by default, you will care about almost all of these things. I'm not saying you should care about all of these things all or most of the time, but that's the correct mindset to put you in sync with the author's conclusions (mostly -- I don't really think 120Hz is that big a deal).

> I don't really think 120Hz is that big a deal IMO 120 Hz monitors are overrated for pretty much everything except for FPS games (and similar fast-paced interactive titles). I have a 144 Hz display and I would not want to go back to a 60 Hz display for gaming. At some point, my monitor changed to a 60 Hz refresh rate without telling me after some driver update. The first time I played Overwatch after that happened I…

After starting with 144 Hz monitor the difference to 60 Hz already with desktop mouse movements is so clear that it's immediately obvious if the refresh rate changed.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#399

Post by specialist »

dsabanin wrote: post #131
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

I love my 3 monitor setup. In 20 years of coding, I finally reached peak productivity in my workspace. No switching between windows, ease of throwing a window aside for monitoring, laying out information and tools side to side. It’s incredible once you readjust your habits and learn to use that new space. I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I was one of…

I desperately want to use the new iPad Magic Keyboard with my iMac.

I LOVE the trackpad & keyboard combo on my MacBookPro. For a while, I was using Teleport to use my laptop as the input device for my iMac.

I do occasionally use the Magic Mouse for drawing (direct manipulation) tasks.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#400

Post by kitsunesoba »

mulmen wrote: post #392
auggierose wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first. In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent. Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect th…

>How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first.

At least for apps that are dedicated to one screen + virtual desktop, right click its icon in the dock and assign it to that display and workspace.

Note that the effectiveness of window restoration also depends on the make/model of your monitors – many manufacturers incorrectly share EDID's across all units of the same model and sometimes across multiple models, making it much more difficult for operating systems to uniquely identify them.

Post reply on HN