The working from home thread: tips and advice

Either way works :)

Have you got something with a retina (or close) screen? If so, compare the resolution. I was perfectly happy with my 30" apple cinema screen before I got my 27" LG 5K. I'll never look back, the high res makes too much difference.

I have bought the 5120 x 1440 Samsung, should be here tomorrow, expect pictures...

I have bought the 5120 x 1440 Samsung, should be here tomorrow, expect pictures...

I think that's the right choice - should be able to replace the triple monitor setup.

That's the hope.

Next question is: Do I stick with the stand or get a heavy duty arm to hold it, always been a fan of having monitors on arms before, as prefer the tidier look.

This one seems to be rated to 15kg, monitor is 11.6kg without the stand.

Similar. Sick of seeing my own face.

I would go with an arm like the one you linked. Better for cable management and easy to adjust height / position.

I feel sorry for all the other people that have to look at me / listen to me drone on.

There's a subreddit that has good info - /r/ultrawidemasterrace

Yes, just been looking there, first reccomendation was over £200...

nearly bought the one I linked to, as amazon specs says it supports 59 inch, went to their website and it says only up to 40 inch, so now not sure whether to take a punt.

That arm looks good, is it yours?

Not mine - some reddit random.

The picture gives me the heebyjeebies though, as the monitor isn't level.

Ah, figured that might be the case, there seems to be a bit more choice stateside.

hmmm reading reddit, it seems the monitor I have is hard to put on an arm, due to the nature of the weight and how front heavy it is, only options seems to be around £300, which is painful.

I was actually pondering whether I could put it on a floorstanding TV stand like this Issues I can potentially see is the glass being floor bit being annoying, and potentially the screen being too far away, my desk is 800mm deep, so this may well be an issue! Other issue is whether the stand goes low enough, but I suspect that could be modified to make work.

You can get much lower table top stands that are basically the same as that one. I've got one in the living room (the TV came with brackets at either side which were too wide for the thing it sits on).

Something like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perlegear-TVs-Securely-400x400mm-Height-Adjustable-Management-Black/dp/B077P3SZGT

Yes, I guess they don’t really solve the issue of keeping my desk nice and clear, I may just have to make something from scratch or wait for cheaper arms to come onto the market.

Well it arrived, it’s big. 79 columns of excel on one screen big.

1 Attachment

Looks great.

Looks awesome. Does Windows do quarter screen snap-to or do you have to arrange them manually?

79 columns of excel on one screen big.

BG92 is visible on a standard 4K display and default cell sizing and the usual toolbars/etc. Col 79 would be, err, CA if I'm not mistaken.

Having one big screen revolutionised my working day and productivity (so much so that I decided to leave but that's a different story).

Get the windows snap to power tool. You can customize zones

Just catching up on the last few pages of this thread.. was going to compliment your earlier setup with the three screens .. then you go and buy this half-pipe.

I want to hear the story.. “how my big screen changed my life”

I use a program called Divvy which I suspect does the same as the snap to power tool, I have an 8x4 grid set up, with short cuts to send to 2x4 or 4x4, so pretty good for just sending things off where I want them, although the hilarity of having one thing open across the whole screen is quite fun still.

Ha, I did like the set up, but the high screen was giving me neck ache, and the two low screens were perfect for having 2 things open at once, but for a lot of my work I need three excel files open, so being able to have them all up front will make a world of difference to me.

Me too

I want to hear the story.. “how my big screen changed my life”

Nothing special, I've gone through several iterations over the years:-

a) Laptop screen only
b) Laptop with separate screen (1024x768 originally, then 1920x1080)
c) Dual 1920x1080 displays (at home) and 1920x1080 and a 2560x1440 screen in the office
d) Single 4K 43" monitor

Each time the increase in productivity is quite noticeable.

A lot of my work is coding or debugging stuff in a terminal window. With more screen available I can have more and more information on the screen:

• A second terminal window for looking at the output of logfiles and things
  
• A browser window with a PDF open with documentation or customer specific notes
  
• A text editor window for making more notes in
  
  

Less context switching with alt-tab (or switching screens in screen/tmux), and a bigger screen means I can also have a larger terminal window open, being able to see 100+ lines of code or log file in one go instead of just ~50 really helps.

And, as I said before, I can have other less important windows open and partially visible (like Slack and email client) so that I don't get distracted flicking to them to check them as I can see that nothing new has come in (I'm lucky that I only get ~30 work emails a day).

As for the last bit, sorting out my whole WFH setup really made me think about my current job (I've been here 20+ years) and whether it was the best use of my brain/skills/time/etc and ultimately I realised it wasn't, so I decided to move on.