Wide-screen monitors for e-books: Are you using one—or considering it?
Wide-screen desktop monitors aren’t just for the home video crowd.
For us e-booklovers, they’re better than the usual portrait variety. The trick is to use a two-column, booklike view. The left screenshot shows what Mobipocket looks like on the Soyo 22-inch LCD that TigerDirect is selling for $199.00. Click here for a detailed view, although you may have to scroll.
Now, in the booklike mode running in “Full screen,” not shown, I can easily see more than 1,000 words at a time with 
Mobipocket and a font smaller than tried here. By word count, that’s far more than with a typical paper book—and perhaps faster, more enjoyable reading for many. Not the worst setup for reading Moby Dick or other public domain works with some interminable paragraphs. While a standard 19-inch-monitor would also have worked in the two-column mode, the extra width does make a difference, as I see it.
Catnip if you want to laze back
With Mobipocket Desktop you can use the mousewheel to change pages. Combine that wrinkle with a wireless mouse, and you can laze back in your reclining chair and enjoy the bigger fonts without a keyboard or cable to spoil the fun.
FBReader, which I most often use on handhelds, lacks double-column capability, at least in the Windows version, although I suspect it’ll be coming in time. One free program which does offer it on Windows boxes is yBook. uBook has similar capabilities and runs on Windows and CE systems and maybe others. What are your own favorite apps for double-column e-reading on various operating systems, and why?
Still keen on handhelds for e-books: Yes, I prefer handhelds and small tablets for e-book reading even with the two column feature now available in the full glory of the 22-inch monitor—I’d rather not sit constantly at a desk. But not everyone feels this way. Beyond that, the wide screen means I can more easily take in online newspaper and blow up the type. Same for other browsing.
Warning about the Soyos from Tiger: I lucked out. Some customer-reviewers have complained of dead pixels and other problems. To be on the safe side, you might want to pay a bit more and get, say, an Acer.
More caveats: At least try to see a monitor in a store before you buy. Also insist on a refresh rate of 75hz or higher for the resolution you’ll be running the monitor in. The Soyo’s 75hz is adequate but hardly stellar. If you hate the smallest trace of flicker, you might aim for 80 or 85, which, however, would increase your costs. See some tips here and here.
The negative and positive of wide-screen monitors for writing: Some people may find that they write better with a monitor in the portrait mode, given their screen-scanning habits. Then again, with a wide screen monitor—landscape, in other words—you can blow up the font in a program like Word and never miss worry about left-to-right scrolling. You might actually catch more errors than with paper. Alas, Windows Live Writer, which I use to turn out the TeleBlog, lacks a zoom capability, and I normally prefer to operate with a higher res than, say, 800X600—so the font size still isn’t as big as I’d like. As I write this, I’m using 1,280X800.
STANDard advice—including a VESA reminder: I used an Ergotron Neo-Flex stand left over from my older LCD display so I could position the Soyo at just the right height, without fuss. Don’t buy the 22-inch Soyo if you lack a stand. The good news is that you can find some cheapies on eBay, although you’d want to check to see if they’ll work with the larger monitors. Get an LCD with VESA-spaced holes for the screws for the mount. VESA, by the way, is far from perfect as a standard—but better than the e-book format war.
The 24-inch possibility: Yes, I’d have gone for 24 inches if my budget had allowed.
A recycling tip: My old CRT went to a TV shop, which also handles old computers and which didn’t charge me anything. I of course leveled with the shop about the condition. Happy parts scavenging!
Related: The double-column trick for e-books on the Tablet PC, the Cybook and other big-screen readers.
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May 6th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
The best is to have a multiple monitor set-up, so you can keep a book on one screen and do other stuff if you so wish on the other screens.
Have not checked the prices recently, but with a 40$ dual graphics card I added 2 monitors several years ago, so I have 3 - the monitors changed in time, now I have left and right 2 19″ LCD’s and center one of those wide-screens described above.
With Fbreader for XP -keys customized like on my 770, or with Mobi reader, you can display very nicely a book - I usually use the left screen for it and one column since I read by scanning the page
May 6th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Great tips, Liviu. My budget didn’t allow the twin monitor approach, but it’s certainly an interesting option. Thanks. David
May 6th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
LCD monitors don’t have refresh rates. That only applies to CRTs. Here is the relevant portion of a Wikipedia article:
Much of the discussion of refresh rate does not apply to the liquid crystal portion of an LCD monitor. This is because while a CRT monitor uses the same mechanism for both illumination and imaging, LCDs employ a separate backlight to illuminate the image being portrayed by the LCD’s liquid crystal shutters. The shutters themselves do not have a “refresh rate” as such due to the fact that they always stay at whatever opacity they were last instructed to continuously, and do not become more or less transparent until instructed to produce a different opacity.
The closest thing liquid crystal shutters have to a refresh rate is their response time, while nearly all LCD backlights (most notably fluorescent cathodes, which commonly operate at ~200Hz) have a separate figure known as flicker, which describes how many times a second the backlight pulses on and off.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
What you want to look for in LCDs is low response time 2ms to 8ms are pretty common these days.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I concur with David Rothman on the value of larger screens. A 27 inch widescreen monitor is great when I wish to read intensively. A region of the screen is dedicated to the primary text. Another region is used for tools such as the Google Translator, Answers.com and Wikipedia. Another region allows notes to be entered and exhibited in a word processor.
I prefer texts that allow cut-and-paste so that I can place sample passages in my notes that are particularly well written, poorly written, humorously provocative, or retainable for some other reason. One wonderful aspect of the e-books that Tor has been distributing recently is the lack of a crude DRM straitjacket. Text can be expeditiously cut-and-pasted. The full text of an e-book together with my notes can be indexed for search in the future on my hard drive.
The multi-screen setup that Liviu discusses sounds excellent. I have used multi-screen systems in the past and they do help when you are juggling several tasks.
I also sometimes read using a tablet computer with a 14 inch screen. Switching between multiple windows is more cumbersome with a smaller screen but it is doable. When I read using my eBookwise, or bundled pieces of dead tree it is more difficult to consult the web and keep notes.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I guess I don’t see the value of having dual-page views as shown in the graphic. I like being able to read continuously without big shifts in my reading positioning. On the other hand, I absolutely agree with Garson on the value of being able to open multiple windows–especially when doing research. For pure reading enjoyment, give me something bite-sized. I think I read faster on my eBookWise than I do on paper–or the bigger screen of my PC.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
May 8th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Then again, with the right laptop, you could plug it into your 40″ 1080p HDTV, and really glory in it!
(if you have a 40″ 1080p HDTV…and if your laptop graphics will support the 1920×1080 output)