Time to Upgrade Your Monitor • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#971

Post by Zardoz84 » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 6:41 AM UTC

As a Guy that does back&front programming and gaming on the same PC, my subjective opinion it's that having a decent color gamut it's important. I saw details that on a old monitor (with a worse color gamut) dissaper or looks worse. Also, a ultra wide screen gives a lot of screen space to handle a code editor/IDE and a browser on the same screen at same time. At some point on the future, I would replace my secondary monitor following this priorities:

* Correct color gamut. * Minimal resolution of 1080, better if is 1440. * Minimal refresh rate of 60hz, better if at least is 75hz.

This push me to get a LG IPS monitor like the ultra wide main screen that I have now.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#972

Post by Zardoz84 » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 6:42 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #290

asdff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my colleagues love a vertical monitor for writing and reading documents.

I loved it too on a mac. When I switched companies and went to an Ubuntu-based laptop, trying to keep the whole monitor scenario working consistently was frustrating, so I dropped it.

Try KDE/Kubuntu. It handles very fine multi monitor setups.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#973

Post by biql » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 7:47 AM UTC

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…

> The best developers I've known wrote code with tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays.

And first operating systems and unix core utils were most likely written using much simpler tools than what developers have today at their disposal.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#974

Post by MCOfficer » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 7:52 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #248

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…

> ... 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 get where he's coming from, but then again, that's not me. The cheapest monitor he recommends costs as much as my entire setup would cost in its current, used, state. I'm not gonna buy a single monitor for that price - and if i would, i wouldn't downscale it to the resolution [edit: real estate] i had before!

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#975

Post by nuc » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

I have a Dell P2415Q and even though it's relatively old, the density is even higher than the monitors mentioned there.

It doesn't have the feeling of macbook's retina, but still is good enough.

Wouldn't these monitors feel that they have even less clarity that this dell one?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#976

Post by fenesiistvan » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

nennes wrote: post #820

Based on the article, it looks like a poor man's decent option is a 1440p monitor at 60Hz that is running at 1:1 scaling. Benefits: * Cheap-ish * Reasonable resolution with crisp text * Small difference between 60 and 120Hz Drawbacks: * If you want crisp text and reasonable real estate, forget any other resolution than 1440p. It just won't align with the physical pixels and will look horrible. I'd love to get a 4k mo…

You forgot to mention a very impotant thing: what size?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#977

Post by powerapple » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

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 the old CRT text mode. I don't need fine anti-aliased font for my text, I find those fine fonts are too much for me. What's wrong with some non-perfect edges?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#978

Post by fenesiistvan » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #496

I want to thank the author for the article, it comes at the perfect time for me. Earlier today I just had a main power line incident that resulted in burning almost half of all my electric equipment in the house, so I need to buy immediately at least one monitor and I was in doubt about spending too much on it (I need to buy other stuff too) and I am a cheap bastard, but I am moving a bit up versus what I was plannin…

Just read the comments. You will be confused again :)

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#979

Post by KptMarchewa » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 10:48 AM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #898

wonderlg wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BIOS messages I think the problem is right there. You’re living in the past so you get the past’s problem. I haven’t seen a BIOS message in a decade. I’m sure those U3011 are beautiful and hard to let go (I used to have a U27) but it’s also hard to look at a low-dpi screen once you’ve seen the light

Well, my machine is about a decade old. (Many upgrades along the way, though, and holds its own just fine) BTW what's wrong with BIOS or UEFI messages? I much prefer them to cosmetic boot graphics.

Modern computers boot so fast that you can't really see those.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#980

Post by vcsilva » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

The author claims that high-resolution displays are a commodity now. That may be true, but those can be really expensive depending on where you live. In Brazil, most laptops are still (sadly) sold with 1366x768 displays. 1080p displays are that much more expensive, let alone 4K.