Photoshop: one 30" monitor, or 24" +19"?

photobug · December 18, 2006

I want to replace my huge, old CRT monitor. It's a nice 24" monitor, but it's 7 years old so I'm concerned about how much longer it will be able to hold calibration. The most critical application for me, monitor-wise, is Photoshop.

So here's the question --

would I be better off with a single huge monitor (30" Dell 3007WFP) .....or with a 24" LCD (Dell 2407WFP) plus a second LCD screen (19"?) on which to place Photoshop pallettes, etc?

One disadvantag of the 30" monster monitor is that it has only one video input (dual-link DVI), so I can't switch between displaying from my PC and my fileserver. I could do that with a second head. However, the one big LCD is so mind-bendingly gorgeous. And I wonder if it would be awkward making lots of "big" mouse or pen-tablet moves back and forth between the two monitors...

Can anyone speak to this, hopefully using a "voice of experience"?

LuckyBob · December 19, 2006

[QUOTE=photobugOne disadvantag of the 30" monster monitor is that it has only one video input (dual-link DVI), so I can't switch between displaying from my PC and my fileserver.[/QUOTE]

Just something to throw out there regarding this - use Remote Desktop or VNC. I havn't had a monitor on my fileserver for years (in fact, it's currently crammed into a closet).

binghott · December 19, 2006

why not two dell 24" screens? or the dell 24" and a dell 20" widescreen?
i know i always praise my 24" screen on here, but

. i want another one!

bwg · December 19, 2006

binghott wrote:

why not two dell 24" screens? or the dell 24" and a dell 20" widescreen?
i know i always praise my 24" screen on here, but . i want another one!

I have 2 dell 2407's. The mouse moves from one monitor to another arent a big deal at all. You don't even notice.

But, if color accuracy is the most important feature for you, just know that the Dells tend to plug blacks and reds. I had an Apple 23" Cinema Display prior to my Dell's and it was much better in terms of color reproduction. The price has come down on them as well so you're paying under $200 more for the Apple with better display.

The Dell is infinitely more versatile however, with builtin card-reader, height adjustment, every input imaginable(component, s-video, dvi, vga and composite) and PIP.

photobug · December 19, 2006

*Windows* server? No, gotta be Solaris + RAID-Z.

LuckyBob wrote:

Just something to throw out there regarding this - use Remote Desktop or VNC. I havn't had a monitor on my fileserver for years (in fact, it's currently crammed into a closet).

"Remote Desktop"? If that's X-terminal software, it might do the trick. Thanks -- I'll look into it! I'm fine if I can just run windows from the fileserver on my main screen.

If Remote Desktop is PC (Windows)-dedicated software, however, it won't help. I'm stuck with Windows for now to run Photoshop and some other applications, but I find Windows too unstable/unreliable to use for a fileserver. Can't afford for it to lose data or suffer regular reboots.

As any PC owner knows, WinXP starts getting ill and needs to be rebooted a couple of times per month (more like every few days, if you want to keep up with the ongoing barrage of security updates) -- that's no good for a fileserver.

For our fileserver, I run Solaris 10 x86 on an Athlon x64-based machine, using a RAID-Z filesystem for the data. RAID-Z provides far more data integrity than even a RAID-5 hardware solution, and Solaris will run nearly indefinitely without a reboot.

.....But this is getting waaaay off the original subject!

photobug · December 19, 2006

binghott wrote:

why not two dell 24" screens? or the dell 24" and a dell 20" widescreen?!

Actually, that's one option I'm considering. or a 24" Samsung 244T (which I've heard great things about, but it's more $$) plus a second 19" or 20" LCD.

Or, why be stingy? How about a 30" monitor plus two 20" widescreen LCDs? Check out this web page for a photo of this "monster" set-up!

photobug · December 19, 2006

bigwebguy wrote:

I have 2 dell 2407's. The mouse moves from one monitor to another arent a big deal at all.

Whew, I wish I had space on my desk for both! I think I'd be happy with one 24" and a second smaller one (19"-20").

But, if color accuracy is the most important feature for you, just know that the Dells tend to plug blacks and reds.

I've heard good things about the Samsung 244T 24" monitor... but it's more $ (haven't yet researched how much more).

The Dell is infinitely more versatile however, with builtin card-reader, height adjustment, every input imaginable(component, s-video, dvi, vga and composite) and PIP.

The card reader and height adjustments are nice! Not deal-makers or deal-breakers, but certainly nice features.

cabbey · December 21, 2006

photobug wrote:

For our fileserver, I run Solaris 10 x86 on an Athlon x64-based machine, using a RAID-Z filesystem for the data. RAID-Z provides far more data integrity than even a RAID-5 hardware solution, and Solaris will run nearly indefinitely without a reboot.

VNC is the way to go for that setup... you run a vncserver on your solaris box, which has an X server running inside it, then you connect to it with a vnc client from the windows box and have your full X desktop in a window. The best part is that VNC is stateless, so all those windows reboots won't matter to your unix apps, just disconnect the vnc client and leave the server running, which keeps your X server running, which keeps your X client applications running... they just don't know that all the screen updates they send the server aren't being displayed.

photobug wrote:

or a 24" Samsung 244T (which I've heard great things about, but it's more $$)

I've yet to see anyone not be happy with a samsung syncmaster, myself and a handfull of my co-workers included. (though most of us use them for coding more than anything.)

Or, why be stingy? How about a 30" monitor plus two 20" widescreen LCDs? Check out this web page for a photo of this "monster" set-up!

:wow :oogle

photobug · December 21, 2006

cabbey wrote:

VNC is the way to go for that setup... you run a vncserver on your solaris box, which has an X server running inside it, then you connect to it with a vnc client from the windows box and have your full X desktop in a window. The best part is that VNC is stateless, so all those windows reboots won't matter to your unix apps, just disconnect the vnc client and leave the server running, which keeps you X server running, which keeps your X client applications running... they just don't know that all the screen updated they send the server aren't being displayed.

Thanks very much, Cabbey!

So much more that I need to learn how to configure to get it all working... I have the fileserver, now I've got to get Samba configured, mount the files on the Windows machine (or whatever XP calls it -- "map network drive", I think), get the permissions right, copy the files to the server where they'll finally be "safe", etc, etc. Then it sounds like I'll have to tackle VNC. 'Twill sure be nice when it's all up and running!

But at least now I know that there's a viable way run with one display, without being able to hard-switch it between machines (e.g. via KVM switch)!

03FatBoy · December 21, 2006

Option for file server setup
The topic switched to file server talk a ways up there so I had 2 cents to shove in about it.

My home set up for a file server/media server is this:

Network storage link
2 of these enclosures in either ide or sata
and the drives of your choice in either ide or sata.

One drive mirrors the other using SyncBack software (the free version) that runs on my pc. Runs every night.

You can place the storage link anywhere in the house. I have mine under the stairs. Hooks up via ethernet. Plugged everything into a battery backup UPS. The drives show up in the network area of XP. Simple to use.

My 2 cents.

photobug · December 21, 2006

(off-topic...) Fileserver - Linux/Solaris, RAID-Z vs. RAID

03FatBoy wrote:

My home set up for a file server/media server is this:
Network storage link
2 of these enclosures ...
One drive mirrors the other using SyncBack software (the free version) that runs on my pc. Runs every night.

That's a nice Linux solution, and the price is sure "right" ... but it isn't ZFS with RAID-Z, so data loss is possible. Esp when the mirroring only happens once per day(!). ZFS with RAID-Z bests even a full hardware RAID-5 solution (without the expense of a hardware RAID controller).

For a data fileserver, I'm totally sold on running Solaris (which is more commercially hardened than Linux, still open-source and free), using a ZFS/RAID-Z (or RAID-Z2 for the completely paranoid!) filesystem on a pool of drives. RAID-Z will tolerate any single drive failure with zero data loss and RAID-Z2 will tolerate simultaneous double drive failures with zero data loss, without the "write hole" form of failure as with RAID-5.

...see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/zfs_part1.scalable.html for some intro material on ZFS.

Back to the monitor topic, thanks to the suggestions about VNC and/or X-server software, I'm leaning toward the 30" single monitor.

Thanks for all the help, folks! ....Now to wait for a "deal" on the monitor... It's still $1499 - 15% Dell sale - 10% eBay coupon (=$1146). I saw it just 2-3 weeks ago for $1499 - 15% - 15% (about $1080, if I recall), and LCD monitor prices are still hardly increasing right now, so I expect to see it drop a bit after Christmas/New Year's Day.

DavidTO · December 21, 2006

photobug wrote:

That's a nice Linux solution, and the price is sure "right" ... but it isn't ZFS with RAID-Z, so data loss is possible. Esp when the mirroring only happens once per day(!). ZFS with RAID-Z bests even a full har

Note to Andy:

We need a "that-went-right-over-my-head" smiley.

03FatBoy · December 22, 2006

photobug wrote:

That's a nice Linux solution, and the price is sure "right" ... but it isn't ZFS with RAID-Z, so data loss is possible. Esp when the mirroring only happens once per day(!)

The mirror once per day is what I do. A safer option using my configuration hardware would be to set up syncback to run 10-20 times per day to limit the amount of data one might lose should the main drive fail.

Thanks for the info on ZFS. Interesting.

Is the ZFS a "program" that runs on a Solaris Express machine?

From my quick reading, it looks as if that is the case. It also appears that both the OS and the "program" are free. I'm not at all familiar with Solaris.

Thanks for any further info.

photobug · December 22, 2006

03FatBoy wrote:

Is the ZFS a "program" that runs on a Solaris Express machine?

ZFS is a filesystem type, which is now one of the native filesystems on Solaris.

And since it's open source, it can also be adopted by other operating systems (for example, there are rumors that Apple is going to add it to Mac OS).

From my quick reading, it looks as if that is the case. It also appears that both the OS and the "program" are free. I'm not at all familiar with Solaris. Thanks for any further info.

Both Solaris binary images ("Solaris Express", for x86, x64, or SPARC-based sytems) and Solaris source code ("OpenSolaris") are free. ZFS is included in Solaris, either source or binary form.

Not familiar with Solaris? It's Sun Microsystems' flagship Unix-based operating system (if you haven't heard of Sun, then I'm sure you've heard of Java, which Sun also developed). Solaris has existed for about 24 years now (originally called "SunOS") and has become a commercially-hardened operating system (OS) -- I've seen Sun servers at work go literally years without rebooting. Most only get rebooted when hit by a power outage (duh) or for a major OS upgrade (no reboots for minor upgrades, like Windows requires - that drives me nuts). Most Internet traffic flows through machines running Solaris. Big sites like Amazon and eBay run Solaris on one or more layers of their stack (look at any eBay page -- see "powered by Sun" logo in the upper-right corner?)

Bottom line -- you can run the same operating system at home. It's also set up so that (with an add-on module, I think) it's possible to run Linux applications on top of it. And with "Wine", "Crossover", etc, you can even run a fair number of (but not yet all) Windows applications on top of it.

Other vendors are creating special-purpose Solaris distributions now (for example, there's one called Belenix)

ZFS (the "Zettabyte File System") is a recent addition to Solaris, within the last couple of years. There is nothing else like it out there, from anyone. If any of these buzzwords mean anything to you: 128-bit filesystem (compared to, for example, Windows' 16- and 32-bit filesystems), end-to-end checksumming, data on disk is always consistent, compression that can be enabled/disabled on the fly, better performance for lots of applications, and it is soooo simple to administer. And of course it offers RAID-Z, a software RAID solution that's more robust than any hardware RAID solution.

And lastly, ZFS offers filesystem snapshots, which allow you to recover any file as of any snapshot'ed instant in the past. A snapshot takes only about one second to create!

I hope I don't sound too much like a walking "ad", but ZFS just blows me away.

bwg · December 22, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

Note to Andy:

We need a "that-went-right-over-my-head" smiley.

david, here: http://digg.com/apple/Why_ZFS_Matters_to_Mac_Users

Nikolai · December 22, 2006

My 2 cents
I have single 21" widescreen Dell at home and dual 20" regular 4:3 ELOs at work. From all practical purposes, if you can afford the dual setup (inculding the good video card to support both) - by all means, go for it (CAVEAT: current PS CS3 beta has issues with second monitor, but I hope they will clean it out for the release).
Dual setup is extremely helpful. When my old machine at work ate the silicon dust and I had to switch to another one without dual videocard I practially felt helpless.
Dual setup helps with programming, with photoshop - it's a true blessing!

Nikolai · December 22, 2006

A screen shot
To further prove my point about usability of the dual setup, here's a screenshot of CS3:

As you can see, 100% of the primary screen is used by the image itself, and I can get to pretty much EVERY auxiliary palette immediately on my second screen.
I'm not saying it's an ideal configuration, but you get the idea:-)

wxwax · December 22, 2006

Nikolai wrote:

To further prove my point about usability of the dual setup, here's a screenshot of CS3:

Nik, no reason why you couldn't do the same on a single large screen, right?

FWIW, having seen the 30" Apple Cinema Display, I can understand why some might think it's too large. Never thought I'd say it, but it is rather overwhelming.

Nikolai · December 22, 2006

wxwax wrote:

Nik, no reason why you couldn't do the same on a single large screen, right?

FWIW, having seen the 30" Apple Cinema Display, I can understand why some might think it's too large. Never thought I'd say it, but it is rather overwhelming.

Well, to achieve the same horizontal size and resolution you'd need to have something like 37..40" diagonal even for widescreen... Imagine how much would that thing cost compared to 2x24"s

wxwax · December 22, 2006

Nikolai wrote:

Well, to achieve the same horizontal size and resolution you'd need to have something like 37..40" diagonal even for widescreen... Imagine how much would that thing cost compared to 2x24"s

Drop by an Apple store, look at the 30". You might not agree.

Nikolai · December 22, 2006

Sid,

wxwax wrote:

Drop by an Apple store, look at the 30". You might not agree.

I know, they're gorgeous..:-)

Unfortunately, pricey too:-( :cry
Anyway, my vote is on dual monitor setup still ;-)

photobug · December 23, 2006

I'm now leaning toward grabbing the 30" (when a deal pops up) plus a dual-link DVI card, keeping open the possibility of a second smaller (relatively cheap) monitor down the road.

Again, thanks to everyone for all your helpful suggestions!

System · December 27, 2006

I've been running the Dell 2407 since x-mas day and just ordered the 1907 to replace my 17" Apple Studio Display. The Apple LCD looks horrid next to the Dell, it's yellow like an old newspaper compared to the crisp white of the Dell. Amazingly that's with the Dell at 50% brightness and the Apple at 100%. For me 2 24" lcd's would be overkill. I'll probably run the 1907 vertically which should give me a very versatile workspace.

photobug · December 27, 2006

truth wrote:

I've been running the Dell 2407 since x-mas day and just ordered the ((Dell)) 1907 to replace my 17" Apple Studio Display. The Apple LCD looks horrid next to the Dell, it's yellow like an old newspaper compared to the crisp white of the Dell.

But are you comparing both of them fully color-calibrated? If either one wasn't calibrated, then the comparison is apples-and-oranges. Or the Dell might actually be on the blue side of neutral white (as they often come, out of the factory), making it look better by comparison. ...None of which is to in any way knock the Dell 24" monitor (by all accounts it's a very good LCD monitor) or defend the Apple monitor. If both were properly calibrated, then the Apple must be on the declining end of its lifetime...

For me 2 24" lcd's would be overkill. I'll probably run the 1907 vertically which should give me a very versatile workspace.

Two 24's would awwwwfully wide -- you could get whiplash!

. And you'd need a huge desk.

I may put the $ into the 30" display (plus necessary dual-link DVI video card, a friend recommended this one) and then later pick up a cheap second monitor (for exmple, there was just a 17" LCD on sale for $100 total AR, but I took a pass on it this time).

System · December 28, 2006

Both are calibrated with the same profile. The Apple is simply tired.

David_S85 · December 28, 2006

Dig. Darkroom Moderator has a stupid question...
If one has their display properties already pinned at their maximum (let's say its 1920 x 1200), and they're using a 23" monitor of the same native resolution, are they out of luck adding a 2nd monitor to display more desktop space?

This person (who will remain nameless - probably, um, a friend

) might want to add another monitor for editing if that's possible. This person also has a video card with a second non-dvi output.

OS is Windows XP Pro (and not Win95!, Andy).

bwg · December 28, 2006

ok, 2 Dell 2407's and no whiplash as of yet

photobug · December 28, 2006

bigwebguy wrote:

ok, 2 Dell 2407's and no whiplash as of yet

Ooooh, aaaaah, very nice setup.

And boy do you have an uncluttered desk! (mine both at home and at work are quite the opposite...)

bwg · December 28, 2006

photobug wrote:

Ooooh, aaaaah, very nice setup.

And boy do you have an uncluttered desk! (mine both at home and at work are quite the opposite...)

heh, it wasnt that clean 20mins before those photos were taken.

photobug · December 28, 2006

David_S85 wrote:

If one has their display properties already pinned at their maximum (let's say its 1920 x 1200), and they're using a 23" monitor of the same native resolution, are they out of luck adding a 2nd monitor to display more desktop space?

I don't think so -- your-friend-who-shall-remain-nameless just has his/her single-monitor resolution maxed out.

If your "friend" is on Windoze (no, not Troy, the other Windoze), does their Display Properties > Settings dialog box show a display "1" and a display "2" in the diagram at the top? If so, they can set properties such as resolution for each monitor.

I assume the presence of #2 in the dialog box means the video card already can support a second monitor, but I'm not entirely sure that assumption is valid. If not, at worst one can pop in a "cheap" second video card and hook up a monitor to that for your less-demanding work.

Andy · December 28, 2006

Two 23" ACDs. I really like having the dual displays. Sometimes, if I'm doing a lot of Photshop, I'll use the lappy for Internet and IM, Mail, etc, freeing up even more space.

Sometimes, having lots of screenspace really comes in handy. This is BWG's favorite car lately:

Photoshop: one 30" monitor, or 24" +19"?

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