Best monitor solution for our San Francisco Travel Guide company.

[Tookie]

I work at a company that operates a travel guide website for the San Francisco Bay Area. SF Travel Guide.com (http://www.sftravelguide.com)

We use 19" LCD flat panel monitors to do page design and for photo editing. We have been talking about getting bigger screens. Some of the staff disagree about whether it is better to have one big screen, say a 24" that displays a resolution of 1900 by 1220, or two 17" or 19" screens side by side.

For instance I'll be editing the Visiting Alcatraz (http://www.sftravelguide.com/attractions/alcatraz.php) page on one screen and displaying the results on the other screen. I like the idea of having two screens.

But some of the staff think the large screen will fit two Internet browsers and we can also do more intensely detailed editing because of the size and resolution of the screens.

Does anyone have any direct experience about which would be a better choice for our San Francisco Travel website company?

[Scott]

First off, in order to accomplish two displays, your systems will need dual video ports - either DVI or VGA, but preferably DVI for better clarity. You may already have considered this, but just keep it in mind.

Alternatively, one of the 24" widescreen panels like the Dell 2405 FPW (which is what I use) is going to require your video card support 1920x1200 resolution, and not all video cards are capble of that. You should be able to lookup online to get the specs of your card if you don't know them.

The real estate on the 24" widescreen is about the same as two 17" panels. So, compared to two 17" panels, a single 24" is by far the way to go my my opinion, for what you are looking to do -- office work, photo editing, etc.

As for two 19" panels, you do get more real estate, but you have two separate monitors to deal with as well. It's possible but visually impracticle to have windows spanning between the two monitors, so you are really working with two separate workspaces, instead of one large, wide one.

Now, if you are talking about other applications, that's another story. Not all PC games are capable of the 1920x1200 resolution. Also, some only work well in fullscreen mode, which means that single 24" monitor is doing nothing else but running the game. With two monitors, you run the fullscreen game in one, and other applications in the second.

However, if you are going with something like the Dell 2405, it supports s-video and component video inputs, plus Picture-in-Picture (Pip). It's the perfect panel for watching movies in widescreen mode, and you can show your DVI input from the computer in the PiP window.

Back to your business/website application, another capability of the 2405, and others like it, is the ability to tilt the monitor 90 degrees. With a widescreen, that means you can have a full page of text when the screen is in "portrait" mode. This could come in handy for writing articles, editing html, etc.

The final consideration in my opinion is cost. The 2405 fpw is about the best deal for this sort of monitor, and it runs around $1,000 for the version with the 3 year warranty. In the past Dell has had online coupons for this that would bring the price in closer to $900. Two new 19" monitors will be around $700-$800, so the 2405 is definitely a little pricier.

In your case, a second 19" monitor is only going to be around $400, compared to the $900-$1000 for the widescreen, so that's the cheaper way to go. You will want to mix and match your monitors, so everybody is using two of the same model -- the differences in color, brightness, etc between two different models can drive you crazy.

My preference? Buy the 24" monitors, and use that plus a 19" side-by-side. Talk about real estate!

Please let us know what route you take, and how that works out!

- Scott