monitor died...

[VJ]

My monitor died... Well, it was already on life support: it was a 15-or-so year old 22" Acer, whose digital input already failed - it used to be my father's, but he could no longer use it with his laptop that only has hdmi. I was using it on a desktop in a dual monitor setup with an even older 17" Eizo...

I had a 4k LG tv I bought a few years ago while in Spain - it came back after being on loan at family - and decided to put that one. It has a very good matrix for monitor use (I know that as I also used it partly for that purpose earlier) and it works surprisingly well. My wife has a 32" AOC monitor, and the 40" LG barely takes up more space: it is a bit wider, but as it sits lower on its stand, its top is not higher than that of the 32" AOC.

And it work surprisingly well. Rather than adjusting the height of the monitor, I just put the windows where it suits me. Powertoys FancyZones can help with that. The 4K resolution is very nice, as are the colours.

There are some flaws though: the backlight near the edges is not very uniform (visible in the taskbar), and e.g. the corners are not so clear because of that (hard to say why, but e.g. the clock is not very visible).
Luckily it has a well positioned powerbutton (out sight: central at the bottom, on the back) that allows me to switch on/off the monitor without having to use the remote.

Still, I did not think such a big monitor would be that comfortable...

[Umfriend]

Both at the office and the home office, my setup is 2 x 25" 2560x1440. I have tried 27" but those are just to large for me. I couldn't imagine working on a 40".

I wish now that, finally, 16:10 is returning to laptops, 2560x1600 25" monitors will become available but it is not very likely.

[UtwigMU]

I also use 2x 25" 1440x2560 for work and 49" 1440x5120 (slightly larger than dual 25") for own PCs.

[VJ]

Both at the office and the home office, my setup is 2 x 25" 2560x1440. I have tried 27" but those are just to large for me. I couldn't imagine working on a 40".

A lot of the screen-area is much less used: I guess the key thing to be comfortable is to have the windows at the size and position where you want them, and then the "functional" area of the 40" may even be similar to the 2x25". At work I use a single NEC 29" (2560x1080), the 40" has 3840 x 2160, but is a bit wider and higher. I do agree that for pure work, some part of the top (and in my case also the bottom, as the monitor sits quite low on its feet) is not used, working on a maximized window would be a disaster .

On the bottom part I tend to put some less used windows, or windows that monitor something (or minor control: spotify or so), but the top is a bit less useful - at least for me for now (although with more work happing on google docs, etc, the higher vertical space helps). Powertoys has a tool "FancyZones", which offers the same functionality as Matrox' Desktop Divider (back in the days): it defines zones on the display to which you can maximize windows. It works quite well (and the zones can even overlap). Nice to keep a bit of order with the windows.

[VJ]

Interesting effect... fine black lines on a white background (e.g. on text) are sometimes red or blue. Not that often, but sometimes in a text a small vertical piece (e.g. a letter l) would be red or blue. Moving the window to a different place solves it, but it can repeat at a different location. I haven't yet found a picture setting on the TV or driver setting that fixes it. It is a bit distracting at first, I never saw this on a computer monitor, so it probably is related to the matrix of the TV.

[UtwigMU]

You could tweak subpixel rendering of fonts.

[VJ]

Where is that setting? I'm using an HP laptop with Intel video card, I've found nothing in the driver about this...

edit: found it, I need to type "cleartype" in the searchbox of the Windows start menu to get a dialog that allow me to fine tune it. Not at home now, but I'll try it when I get home. Thanks!

[VJ]

You could tweak subpixel rendering of fonts.

That did the trick. I tried the cleartype tuner several times, but the best results I get when cleartype font is rather bold. Any other setting of cleartype results in the red/blue effect. But it still looks ok on the laptop screen, and no artifacts anymore on the TV.
Thanks!