Although additional monitor space can be "useful" and "nicer," in all
honesty I have to say that the necessity of large monitor screens is a
mythology propagated by people who aren't responsible for the purchase
of their own monitors. When people are financially accountable for
their own resources they adapt readily to what's available. At work I
regularly use 8..10 windows at a time on a 1280x1024 screen,
iconofying and de-iconofying them as the need arises. At home, I do
about 5..6 on a 1024x768 screen, with each one taking up at least 2/3
of the screen. Admittedly, both systems have pretty good window
tiling behavior - Windows NT at work, Emacs at home.
We must be careful of applications design requirements that insist we
bloat our system to the limit of available resources. After all, even
on a 1600x1200 screen, it's not hard to make it "not have enough
room." The important part of design is not expanding available
resources (i.e. building systems with 8..10 avatars at once), but
rather, making sure the available resources are well-used.
Ok, I'm probably belaboring my previous points, and I'll sit back and
relax now. I just tend to be "triggered" by these claims that "we've
GOT to have a 21" monitor, 4 GB HD, 128 MB RAM, 300 MHz processor, T1
link, and constantly running e-mail" in order to get any work done.
Cheers,
--
Brandon J. Van Every | Check out Free3d, my 100% efficient, 100% portable
| 3d lib, at <http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery>.
3d Computer Graphics |
C++ UNIX X11 WinNT | E-mail: vanevery@blarg.net