Archive for January, 2009
Are widescreen monitors good in business?
by admin on Jan.16, 2009, under General Banter, Work
Over the past few days I have been gathering quotes to do a PC rollover. Amongst this I had a discussion with one of the rep’s about the use of wide-screen monitors, specifically in a business/corporate environment.
Now I get the attraction for a home user, with many PCs acting as a media centre, thus the call for wide screens to watch DVDs and other visual media. I’ve had a wide-screen on the past 2 notebooks and am in the process of purchasing some new wide-screens for my PCs.
However, I don’t see the point in having a wide-screen monitor sitting on an office desk. There are going to be no wide-screen formatted media being shown on these monitors, and the software we use on them has been developed for standard aspect monitors, thus the use of a wide-screen monitor would seem redundant.
What also troubles me is that wide-screen monitors are usually cheaper than the equivalent “size” standard screen. While I do get that it does take time for business to catch up to the consumer, just think of the number of corporates using Windows Vista, I don’t see why people who prefer standard screens should have to pay a premium over the wide-screens.
The next time we do a rollover, chances are standard screens will be long and buried and thus I thought long and hard about it, but I have had to accept wide-screen monitors in this order. The equivalent size is around $40 more expensive for a standard screen, which is not much but in an order of 50 it’s the cost of a PC in savings. But I’m still uneasy about the whole thing.
