Dual monitor setup ideas, great price on a useful base monitor stand: Planar 997-5253 at Buy.com

This week [1st week January 2011], Buy.com has a pretty good deal on a desktop monitor stand that will get a dual monitor setup working for your desktop. Here is the link that is good for a least a week more. I paid thirty dollars more for the same unit at Amazon.com a while back, this is 'all in' with same shipping options and taking into account that Buy.com charges CA sales tax where Amazon.com does not. I am amazed at the shipping efficiency that Buy.com has, I ordered a 2nd one of these from Buy.com yesterday with their cheapest shipping option, free, and it was delivered via Fedex Home Ground the next afternoon. Clearly your physical location relative to Buy.com's logistics sites will make a difference, but wow!

I'm a big fan of portrait monitor orientation as you can see by the second picture below. What is nice about the Planar dual monitor stand is that is able to handle monitors up to 24 inches in either landscape, portrait or a combination. The ability for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X to handle multiple monitors and monitors turned 90 degrees [or 270 degrees] has greatly improved over the years. I still find Apple's OS X operating system to handle it the best 'out of the box'.  Much of their advantage is that they control both the hardware and video display drivers. In Windows and Linux you often have to deal with one or more third party video card drivers to get it working. That said, my configurations on Ubuntu Linux 10.02 work really well. I have been using nVidia cards for a while and they works solidly, but do expect to spend more time in the setup phase than you will on OS X.

The Planar 997-5253 stand is really easy to setup and is very stable on your desk. I'm using 21 inch monitors in portrait orientation and there is no way they will tip over. In the past, I've used stands that attached to the sides of desks or into drilled holes. While these are the ultimate in stability, they are more difficult to get a good ergonomic setup.

The price and selection of LCD monitors is wide open now, so you have to shop around for price point, size and display quality. The most important item for the dual monitor setup is to make sure the monitors you buy have the ability to remove their standard base and mount via the industry standard 'VESA 100 mm by 100 mm' or 'VESA 75 mm by 75 mm' third party mounting option. Be careful with some of the lower cost LCD monitors, as they do NOT have this option. Apple's LCD monitors do not have this option either, though people have hacked the Apple monitor mounts to make them work. So for a OS X dual monitor configuration; Mac Mini, Mac Book Pro, or Mac Pro I recommend using non-Apple monitors. You might wonder how you drive multiple monitors on a Mac Book Pro or Mac Mini, if you search Google.com, you will find a number of people that have made this work using various configurations of the internal video card and cables. For my configuration on a MacBook Pro, I went with a external USB video card device from DisplayLink.com . Their latest OS X drivers support display rotation, the video quality on the DisplayLink device that I have not as high a quality as the built in video card of the MacBook Pro, but has been fine for my old eyes and has been running solidly with no memory leaks or crashes. On the Linux machine, where I do most of my work, I use nVidia video cards that have dual monitor support build in. The Apple MacPro has similar video cards available. Having a powerful video card with dual DVI or HDMI monitor support is the ideal machine to run. But I can say that my MacBook Pro configuration, which is really a THREE monitor solution, since the display on the notebook works as well. It is solid and a good setup for email, coding and document review.

 

 

 

Checking out two new apps, MarsEdit 3.0 on OSX and Note Taker HD on iPad

I've been experimenting with two new applications, MarsEdit 3.0 on OSX and Note Taker HD on the iPad.

I've used Dan Bricklin's software since VisiCalc on the Apple. It is great to see him writing apps for the iPhone and iPad. Note Taker is an app that lets you write notes just like you were writing with a pen on paper. No attempts to OCR but many interesting technologies to make writing in a 'e'-format the same [or better] than on paper. I have tried various technologies in this area for years, but until Note Taker HD and the iPad I've found all far from the mark of replacing my trusty Mead Composition books. The first one I tried was a predecessor to the Adesso CyberPad, CrossPad by A. T. Cross Pens and IBM. I do not think much has improved since  device until the iPad and Note Taker HD.

 

 

There is still much to be tuned in working with the user interface on the iPad, and Note Taker HD is in the middle of these as many apps are on the iPad. But over all this is a fantastic application. I am still up in the air as to whether typing notes on the iPad or writing them is the right future. Or perhaps a combo of the two is the way to go. Note Taker HD does not attempt to handle typed text currently and I do not know if this is on Bricklin's radar. All of the combo apps I have tried so far are far from a good solution. A third aspect is recording audio as well as writing or typing notes. Note Taker HD, again, does not attempt this and I do not know if it will, some or the note pad type apps do include this feature. I have used a simple hardware voice recorder for many years, but to be able to keep audio and your written notes in sync right from the recorded point is a very useful future.

I have done some test writing with Note Taker HD to get familiar with its operation. There are two edit modes, called Edit 1 and Edit 2. Edit 2 seems to be the way to go for note taking, picture a little 'zoomed' in window that moves along as you write. This is one area were some work is needed, the operation and smoothness of using Edit 2 can be improved, it still gets in the way of pure writing like you do on paper. It needs to be invisible as you write.

I am looking forward to taking Note Taker HD on a real world

 

 

 

 

drive and sharing my experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am writing this post with the new 3.0 version of MarsEdit for OS X, Daniel Jalkut at Red Sweater Software had a great application for writing blog entries and this new version is an outstanding upgrade. I will write about it more as I learn its new features.