The working from home thread: tips and advice

Talking of ultrawide monitors, has anyone ever tried a 49 inch?! I currently use 3 x 27 inch monitors, two as primary displays and 1 as an email and teams screen. I can never quite get the two 27s positioned so that they are of equal use, so wondering if I go to one massive monitor with zoning instead.
If it makes any difference I pretty much use excel and things like that, so not worried about colour or quality to a huge degree, but screen real estate is important.

if i had the money and space for it, i'd get one for sure.

3 27's!?

Next to each other or stacked as well?

Space I have plenty, money less so!

two next to each other and one stacked. I don't think it helps that I don't sit directly in the middle of them, so always default to one of the screens, so find myself moving lots when I am switching between screens, in effect I want from the top half of my excellent diagram to the bottom (green is my chair)

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I went for a single 16:9 (so not wide or ultrawide) 43" 4K monitor:-

It has the same pixel size as my old dual 23" 1920x1080 setup, and the 43" is slightly less wide as than the two 23" mounted horizontally) but obviously no bezel in the middle and twice the height/pixels vertically. I use it at 100% scaling from ~70cm away, just as I did the old setup.

Acer DM431K.

Originally I was thinking dual 27" 4K monitors mounted vertically but opted for this instead. 4K in a 27" monitor would just have too small pixel size for me, so I'd end up scaling things, and then there's little point paying for a 4K monitor if you just upscale things on it.

Interesting, how many windows can you comfortably have open and use? I often find myself flicking between 3 to 4 files, with my dual setup neither of the screens are quite big enough to have 2 programs open on one screen, so there is a lot of alt-tab going on.

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Surely at 43” it’s just called a telly.

At most I have 4 or 5 windows actually visible, but some (like Slack) I only have just enough to see if there are any new messages or notifications (so only the LHS and bottom of the window are visible). Or the Spotify window generally is bottom left so I can hit the pause/next buttons easily (although I can do it from keyboard shortcuts too).

Having one big monitor got me out of the "window must be resized to take up the whole or half of one monitor" mode I used to work in. Looks like you do something similar.

What I was finding with two monitors (both 1920 pixels wide) is that I wanted most windows to be ~1200 pixels wide. So I'd naturally want 3 of them open a time but the bezel(s) down the middle would prevent me from doing so. With no bezels I don't have that problem.

I've currently got 9 browser windows open (personal, slack, spotify, and then 6 different chunks of work) each with >10 tabs open on each. Then I've got another 8 windows (4 terminal sessions, 1 excel, mail client, docs).

Generally I go for main focus of activity top left, supplementary stuff top middle and top right, then lower down are the less important things or things I only need to check occasionally.

I would say a curved 49" monitor would be better for you than the current setup - neck movement limited to side to side and the curve would keep the content at a constant distance.

Surely at 43” it’s just called a telly.

Can't just use a telly as a monitor though, they often have lots of lag between input signal and display. This isn't a problem for watching telly but on a computer it's horrible if the mouse doesn't move straight away when you move it, or keystrokes don't appear on the screen straight away, it's really disconcerting.

I get that in the office, at home on the remote connection it’s horrible. I’m now so used to just typing an waiting for it to appear before checking the smelling mistakes that it no longer bothers me.

smelling mistakes

Bad grammar stinks.

Not sure if I've posted this before. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it was like this before WFH happened.

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rig

hnggg

battle station

hnnnggggg

work

hhhnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg

Anyway - here's my current work battle station.

It's going to be updated soon, once I finish building my desk, and I have my new rig & monitor delivered.

The monitor is lovely, but it's only 1080p, and I'm getting an RTX3080, which seems like a bit of a waste.

2440+ pls, with 144+ refresh & 1ms response.

Because work.

Not games.

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rig

hnggg

battle station

hnnnggggg

work

hhhnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg

Sush you... Thems the words.

Good insights, I will try and persuade the boss (myself) that I need to drop £1k on a new monitor...

I started & ended a job over lockdown last year. I managed to never see the faces of any of the colleagues that I also never met.

Utter bliss.

I should have got a curved desk really! but I have a lovely oak worktop now, so definitely not changing that.

What you getting?

I think I've done one video call in the last 24 months. Most people I work with WFH some of the time, or are in different countries/continents. It's all just audio only conference calls.

Except for grainy profile pictures I've never actually seen my boss or main colleague. I've worked with the former for 3 years and the latter for over 10.

PC is Ryzen 5600x, RTX3080, Asus X570. Zero RGBollox.
Thinking about the Samsung Odyssey G9 as a monitor.

PC is Ryzen 5600x, RTX3080, Asus X570

what a neckbeard !

This is so odd to me.

Last week, I spent 31 hours on video calls.