Tombstone Perks
One of the advantages of using a large "tombstone" monitor (which is what I call my two new Samsung LCD displays running in portrait mode) is that vertical space is no longer in such short supply. The two that I now have (an older 213T and a newer 214T) both run at 1200 X 1600, which leaves me enough vertical space to do a lot of interesting things I just couldn't manage before. One is to see both a Delphi form under development and a fair amount of code, all at the same time, without having to punch F12 to get the form to pop up from under the code window.
But the one that surprised me most by its usefulness is being able to expand the Windows task bar to three lines. On a busy day I might have most of a dozen apps active (this machine has a lot of memory, and acts like it) but on a single-line task bar, the icons compress horizontally to the point that their text disappears and I can't tell which is which. When I have five or six Word documents open at once, that means I have to remember which taskbar button is for which document, which is annoying.
A typical taskbar arrangement for me can be seen above. (Click on the image for a full-size bitmap.) The apps could do a better job displaying their buttons-especially by not redundantly stating their names textually beside their icons-but at least I can now tell which button goes with which document. (For many things it doesn't matter; I only have one newsreader or mail client open at once, for example.)
The Samsung 214T is a fantastic display, much faster on refresh than the 213T (though I wouldn't try playing Quake on it) and so razor sharp that working at 1200 X 1600 doesn't bother my eyes-I just pulled the monitor a little closer to me and the eyestrain factor went away. Document guy that I am, I really enjoy the tombstone life. If you need a monitor, get yourself one of the new pivoting Samsungs and see if portrait mode doesn't provide you with some unexpected perks as well.