If you’re fortunate enough to be using a dual-screen setup (I suggest that everyone should be using dual screens), check out these 45 wallpapers from the constantly amazing Six Revisions.
Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
Dual Screen Wallpaper
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Everything Sounds Better With Spin
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
You have to shake your head every time someone goes off about “netbooks”, those wonderful, tiny, cute computers that don’t cost very much. When you look at them, what do you really see? How about a crappy laptop that can barely run Windows. The thing is cheap in more ways than one – but somehow marketers have been able to spin that as a good thing and make big profits off useless hardware without needing to develop anything new.
This Brave New World Seems Just Like the Old
Anything sounds better with a little bit of spin – Web 1.0 is clunky, slow, ugly. Web 2.0 is a designer’s dream, sexy, with new technology. Well, no. The technology isn’t new at all – the web is the same. The only difference is enough marketers held onto the “Web 2.0″ buzz phrase and shouted it repeatedly long enough that it became accepted as fact.
What’s So Social About Media?
There was never anything truly “new” about New Media. There’s nothing earth shattering about Social Media either. Call it a new paradigm all you want, there is nothing different between it and “old” media: the goal is to communicate our message to as many people as possible. How others perceive your brand and how you react to that feedback is not something new and alien – it’s just a lot faster now than it used to be. Your audience is your focus group. Traditional roles haven’t changed one bit – their owners have.
People Cost More Than Equipment
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Much of the professional world has switched over to a two-monitor setup. I can’t even begin to imagine how I ever did with just one since I am now so used to having a help or a search open just outside of my main viewing area. Having reference material in my peripheral vision but accessible just by turning my head is much faster and less disruptive than having the fumble around the task bar and switch the focus of my attention.
It is said that switching tasks takes time – some users report productivity reductions of up to 15 minutes each time they have to change their focus of attention. If a programmer has to look at the documentation only once per day, their employer is looking at 1.25 hours of lost productivity every week, which may not seem like much but when extrapolated to that person’s yearly wage (averaging at $78k) the cost of the lost productivity is worth approximately $2400; much cheaper to buy that $500 monitor. For the general programmer, you can get by with less – a 17-inch LCD retails for less than $200. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
The same logic can be applied to the purchase of an entire system. What is the productivity cost of having to wait for downloads and load times over the cost of a new system? Even if no new revenue is generated by the company directly as a result of the software or hardware purchase it can be worthwhile to invest in new equipment. Why hire someone and not provide them with the best tools possible to do their job? It’s kind of like putting a Mazda engine inside a Ford (wait a minute…)
- improved satisifaction
- reduced ’switching’ time
- employees more knowledgable with ‘current/cutting edge’ software
There was a time in the early industrial revolution when buying equipment and machinery was prohibitively expensive, and people could be trained to keep old hardware running for many years in order to maximize that equipment’s value to the company.
Today the reverse is true – computer hardware can be acquired at a fraction of a cost of the person needed to run it – and the training involved in having someone fill the shoes of a departed worker can be crippling to the bottom line of a business. Instead of trying to make machines last as long as possible it should be the priority of any manager to make the people last as long as possible. In a world where individual jobs are replaceable and just a stepping stone to “something better”, volumes are said by the simple act of someone staying in their role for a prolonged amount of time – both about the worker and about the quality of the employer they give their time for.
Lenovo Thinkpad Laptop Boasts Second Screen
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Switching to a dual monitor setup has been the major paradigm shift in my productivity. The size of the second screen doesn’t matter a great deal to me because it only typically holds reference manuals and programming API documentation.
For my needs, the Lenovo W700ds Thinkpad sounds like the ideal solution. I practically drool at the thought of haivng almost 1TB storage space, 8GB ram and a Quad core processor. The really interesting feature of this laptop is the 10″ second screen that pulls out of the side. That’s right – a dual screen laptop.
There is a price to pay for all that goodness: the thing is a brick, weighing in at 11lbs. Compare that to a much larger item like a guitar, which typically weighs 8-12lbs. The design is ugly – the second screen slides out from the side of the machine and could seriously use some Apple-esque style sensibilities.