My setup at Faithlife (including standing desk with electric motor!)
Remember that time when someone showed you how to hit Alt+Tab on your keyboard to switch programs? You were either like, “I can do that with a mouse, so why do I need to learn a keyboard shortcut,” or you were like, “WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!”
I was WOW WOW. Where had this tip been all my digital life? It’s so obvious to me now that keyboard shortcuts are the most efficient way to tell a computer what to do. But it never occurred to me before I was shown.
So let me try you on another digital tip that has made me equally WOW WOW, a tip that I wish I had come across years ago but that never occurred to me: flip your widescreen monitor vertical.
I’m serious. Try it. It’s nothing less than twelve WOWs. Everything but video-consumption and graphic design works better on a tall screen. The web. Word-processing. Document-reading. Um… What else are you doing on your computer?
My daily work setup from a while back
How I edited/wrote Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption
So the million dollar question is . . . How does one do this? Did you change the settings on your laptop or on the monitor or both?
It’s true: not every monitor can do it; this monitor has a square slot for the stand, and I switched the stand out for another that allowed the vertical orientation.
Mac OS X, at least on Mavericks, can handle this no problem. It is my understanding that Windows 8 can do so as well, but I believe that with previous versions of Windows you may need a specific device driver.
In any case, give it a shot if you can. It works so well for writers that I think it’s worth jury-rigging.
This sounds like a great idea for some people, but when I started thinking about this sentence, I started to realize it wouldn’t work for me: “What else are you doing on your computer?” Let’s see… JIRA Agile, Trello, Eclipse and other IDEs, multiple terminal windows, Outlook, spreadsheets, Amazon Web Services console, etc. When I consider that these are the applications I use most of my work day and that they work better in a horizontal configuration, then I think I better stick with landscape mode.
I guess this might work if you you’re primarily a writer or researcher, but I imagine it wouldn’t work so well for most people in IT-related fields. I suppose it just reinforces my technology mantra: “Use the toolset that works for you.”
You’re right, too, Dave. =)
I started doing this with Windows 7 a few weeks back with no problems. The key is the “Orientation” setting in the screenshot below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0r9dz6jw2t1hfno/Screenshot%202014-05-05%2016.37.38.png
This was made on my home computer, where the second monitor doesn’t rotate, but I did this at work really easily.
Well, since my 20″ won’t rotate, now you created a desire that cannot be met on the current budget….thanks Mark! I will rejoice with you, enjoy your vertical orientation. I will keep lower to the earth and continue to grovel in my horizontal perspective!! 🙂