19″, 22″ or 24″: how big is your LCD monitor?

After yesterday’s super long post, I’m going to keep things much shorter and sweeter today. … There are actually two major computer shows in Taipei every year. The first one, everyone knows is Computex. But the second one is IT Month, and last year it attracted over 750,000 visitors as it toured the island. That’s not bad going.

Christine, a friend and I went to 101 to a nice restaurant for lunch on Sunday. And I fell in love… with a 24″ Apple display in the Apple Store in “New York New York Department Store“. I’m not particularly fond of fruit, really. Mostly, they tend to be rather expensive here, and you can get a LOT more PC for the SAME price. But there are times when a large-size monitor will really do things: on that monitor, I could open my blog page on one side, and another page on the other side.

And truthfully, there are times when working away on such a size would really help: like updating my blog theme. It’s pretty difficult to keep flicking back and forth between screens to make sure that you have copied all the elements and javascripts from the old theme to the new one. Trust me, it’s painful. In fact, if you look closely, apart from the sidebar, there are still some elements missing.

Could a large monitor help? Well, yes it could! But there’s a snag: I’m looking at 22″ monitors and I’m finding most of them support 1680*1050 which is a resolution my graphics card does NOT support… Whoa! In fact, my card seems to go all the way upto 2048, but 1680 is not one of them… Woops! Little did I know.

So I can choose: a 20″ monitor (which is still pretty big), two 19″ monitors (one for each of my systems at home), or a 24″ monitor… Which would you choose? Do you have any suggestions on other solutions? I’d like to hear what you have to say.

What is your current monitor choice? I’m using a 15″ LCD 1024*768 monitor from about 5 or 6 years ago at home, a Philips 17″ LCD monitor that is two years old (and plenty big!) at work…