My Eyes: I wear either strong progressive bifocal glasses, or single-vision contacts with lower-power readers when I need to read close up or work with a monitor.
Personal Computer: Mac mini plugged into a single 27" or so flatscreen HDTV. Works fine, I can zoom and adjust to task; occasionally I think “I should buy an actual computer monitor for better resolution”
Work Computer: PC is an all-in-one computer and screen which I believe is 24". It has a built-in HDMI out port so I’ve paired with a secondary screen that is slightly smaller (like 22") but not a problem. Dual monitors really revolutionized my work: I do customer service phone calls and emails and it really helps that I basically have four full-page size screen sections basically at 8x10" size- 3 for browsers, one for notes.
Situation: Our work at home situation currently is BYOD (bring your own device) and I’m happy with what I have. My Team Lead casually asked “do you want to do some testing?” I somewhat unthinkingly agreed to test a computer the company will ship to me for work. They are testing feasibility of switching to “everyone uses the same computer that we configure and provide.” This makes sense as everyone else complains of configuration and connection issues, this reduces the number of situations the help desk needs to support since the hardware is known.
After thinking about this for a while I realized they are likely not going to ship an all in one or a screen - if they do, the box they ship will likely be single-monitor out so I would lose a whole lot of screen real-estate and crunch my workflow down which is a real bummer since I’m often switching and copy-pasting between approximately 8-10 applications and web pages depending on the situation.
Potential solutions: In order to maintain my work desktop real estate, what is the best option?
- Buy one really big monitor or flat-screen TV. I currently own a 55" high def television I don’t really watch much. If that fits on my work desk, should I hook that up and basically go IMAX? That might be a little overkill, but perhaps a 44" or similar might work? Desk has a raised 10" deep shelf that spans the entire width specially to elevate two monitors to eye level. TV screen might offer less in terms of close-work resolution. Normally we’re locked into the Remote Desktop resolution with no options to resize nor magnify.
- Buy a potentially expensive extra-wide-monitor similar to two 16x9 monitors in one. I can afford a decent monitor if necessary. My friend even has one that curves in which is technically for gaming, but he uses it at work.
- Not sure if this exists, but: Buy two wide screen monitors of the same size that potentially include HDMI chaining, so one monitor plugs into the computer then wire it to a secondary monitor. My Remote Desktop had no problem detecting the secondary monitor piggybacked from my all-in-one so I assume it would do the same for linked monitors…if that’s a thing?
This is all prospective until I know what the actual hardware capabilities are of the computer that they send me, but as usual I’m obsessively pre-planning what my options might be. Part of the issue is my aged eyes tend to tire out at about hour 5 of an 8 hour shift so I’m unsure if I should go inexpensive TVs as big as possible or should stay with computer monitors with higher resolution and refresh rate.
Thoughts and advice?
EDIT: After a brief search it seems that monitors themselves don’t “daisy chain” (and if they do, they only show the same screen instead of extending the desktop) unless you go through “Display Port” which is a weird thing I haven’t researched. I’m curious if DisplayPort needs to be from the computer, or if the first monitor can connect with HDMI then DisplayPort between them…
