Well I think I've almost got it sorted out... peerhaps an upgrade on my 17" LCD, but for now, after the demise of a staff member's CRT monitor - (the cat used it for a springboard to get to a higher place) - it was time to upgrade my working environment.

A good working environment is very important when you're faced with having to do many things over the day, which most business owners would experience.

I am sure that most of us start off with getting something done, and by close of day, still may not have got them all sorted out.  And often faced with a myriad of things we're working on at once, how to be efficient in our workspace.

For me, being left hand (very) it's hard to find ways to make the space work to my advantage, even the high end mouse and keyboard configurations are not left hand friendly. 

I thought I'd share some specs, as some people ask me how do I get to do so much and it's taken a few years, but now I think I have an efficient setup.

Not sure how many of you have a dual monitor system, but I can remember a colleague telling me that if someone scoffs the idea of the 'two monitor' or 'multi display' system, then they haven't tried it themselves.  It's not for showing off, it's for efficiency and having had that setup for some time now, I realise how I can hardly function on an efficient level without a multi screen setup.

But I took it to the next level a couple of years ago with the horror and fear that running everything on a single box would be the demise of you if you ever had a problem. So we have split how things work over our network, which takes off the pressure on any one machine, and also performance wise, it's a great option to consider. 

The cost of setting up a good work environment to me is something that's ongoing.  I don't buy off the shelf boxes, we build our own, as usually I need as much ram for performance as possible, and a quiet machine, so this last box I've had built up (thanks to my husband Andrew) is closer to me having the 'perfect' setup.

When I had to replace a monitor, my first thought was to just grab another 17" and keep going but upon exploration, I realised how much cheaper LCD's were and how much better even the base models were, and how many more manufacturers were on the market.  I had to ascertain whether I needed a 'top end' whizz bang 3000:1 ratio, 2ms response time LCD and realised that I don't need these things for my day to day machine.  Having said that, I like to also have access to a CRT monitor to see the differences.. I think LCD doesn't always display colours like it should, but then thought, if it's happening to me, perhaps it's also happening to others.

I also employ a graphics guy so he has the better monitor - 24" LCD and I trust his vision and decisions when it comes to colour calibration, but even these cheaper machines have a clarity that impresses me.  And when I'm talking about the cheaper machines, I'm talking about only a few dollars in price that separate them.  

Dead Pixels I'm sure are an important consideration too, last monitor that had 1 dead pixel  - it just went away once and I never saw it again, but it was there for quite a while - 1 red dot glaring at whatever I did.

Another thing, I didn't need to have sound on board. I've got that on one and it's rather ordinary - which lead me to believe I paid for something I never used and it really wasn't meant for that purpose on most of the LCD's available.

So, I ended up buy a ChiMei 22" CMV 221 A/D (analogue/digital) monitor.  Interestingly enough it has no drivers so I put on the Acer drivers after a search revealed they would work, but basically, just turned it on and went from there.  But I do have an NVidia 7600 graphics care (you know - the one without the fan - it's soooooo quiet) and it has a nice way for me to handle how the LCD's look.   I was impressed overall

Considering it had been close on 18 months maybe 2 years since my last LCD purchase, I felt it was like a decade ago with the changes in technology and pricing and options.  There is still a bit of homework to be done, and again, not wanting a top of the range product, just one that does it's job efficiently, was going to suit me.  Its not that  I don't love spending money on technology but sometimes you have to stop and look at things objectively.    I used to think the best was always the way to go, but as I get older I'm seeing common things in the best and latest - they keep you broke, they don't often work, so I'm happy now to sit behind those 'bleeding edge' people and simply let them do the suffering..... and I am so glad we have them out there, since it's vital for technology to push forward.

So here is a screen shot of my workspace... 
My suggestion is to have at least two monitors... switching between programs and browsers becomes more efficient and you can quickly drag things from one screen to another without having to close and open new windows.

If you can at all afford to have two systems, then one for graphics and one for dev will help you ease the load of these very hungry applications which are getting bigger and bigger, using more memory and taking up an enormous amount of space.

Now this photo is a bit of a tongue in cheek one - bit over the top I guess, but as I work towards the 'Holy Grail of work environment' I'm pleased to say that I really like what I have now and the 22" monitor has made my space quite alot more relaxed... by that I mean I can put things in front of me without having to keep swtiching windows - and visually it's lovely to look at and read from - it makes screen reading much more friendly.  I am impressed with how quick it's been to get used to, and also the efficiency as I can view things from an xls sheet as an example, and keep typing them in word, without having to jump from screen to screen and close up those tool bars, fiddle with the maximise and minimise features, and I'm sure if anyone who is multi tasking reads this, they'll know just what I mean.

With DotNetNuke skinning in particular, I've always advocated that you need to think of your work space, as you need to have a few windows open to jump between apps, pages, browsers, files... to do things easily, or at least quicker when you're doing hours and hours of tweaking.

This has also taken me a few years to build up and I go through different stages, but now, I feel that I'm getting it right.  Of course for many of you, the amount of mail setups won't be an issue - I have several PST files that store the mail, as I exceeded the 2GB allowance ages ago - which doesn't occur if you use exchange I think but I don't use exchange, so had to work around that.

I think too, I really love doing what I do. I used to spend about 4 - 5 hours a day on the DotNetNuke forums as part of the role I had when in the core team, but now that I don't have to, I feel I've been able to pull alot of the loose ends that were niggling in my business, into a more orderly format, and have focussed on working on things that suit my goals more, and it's paying off. 

This new monitor really is cool - even if it's a budget one, I can live with it for now, and step by step, make improvements, which I'm suggesting to you, if you've ever in a place to upgrade and start using two monitors, you will really appreciate it and never look back.

The images link to a higher res one.