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Personalized Monitor Position

Wed, 04/23/2008 - 7:05am — Rjae Easton

Are you running Vista? Do you have dual monitors? Last question: do you have them stacked vertically?

The startup monitor position in Vista looks like this:

After every startup I alter the monitor position as follows:

Why do I have to do this? Why is this personalization not persisted? I really don't know. I presumed the much-touted multi-monitor support included in Vista SP1 would provide a solution, but alas, no.

I am curious to know others' experience. Keep in mind that I logon using a Limited User Access (LUA) account - although the behavior does not change when I startup as a member of local Administrators group.

Comments


Wed, 11/12/2008 - 12:41pm — abby, the hacker chick blog (not verified)

Wow, is that two 27" widescreen displays stacked on top of one another? What do you DO on that thing?

I've got 2 monitors - but they're side by side, so the config settings stay put. A 24" widescreen and then, to it's right, a 20" widescreen flipped on it's side in a portrait configuration. Which, I thought was a pretty spiffy config, but now... two 27" stacked on top of one another.

I'm going to have to rethink this.


Wed, 11/19/2008 - 1:12pm — Rjae Easton

All you dev heads out there should go read Abby's blog. She gets it.

Yeah, Abby, I guess I prefer the vertical stack - and I've tested that preference for two months now by using side-by-side arrangement. (I was forced into this after a move to a temporary house where I don't want to drill mounting hardware into the wall.)

I highly recommend 27" over 24" to anyone making a new purchase. Text is considerably larger and thus much less work on the eyes. When I work from Steve's house (24" monitors) I feel the difference.

What does one do with so much real estate? Well my typical setup is the following:

  • Bottom monitor is always dedicated to whatever editor I am using. For the most part that is Visual Studio.
  • Top monitor has: browser, several IM chats, email, and my favorite Windows console. It also has my unit test runner and tail sessions.

Now what I really want is one of those spiffy tablets like you have. Steve and I are currently in the research phase for a new product, code named "The Kitchen", that is geared towards touchscreens. :^)