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September 20, 2006

But sometimes bigger is better...

December of last year, Jenni and I were both using PowerBooks as our main computers. Me on a 15” PowerBook, she on a 12” PowerBook. As of this weekend, we’ve both shifted to iMacs at home: I’m using a 20” iMac, she’s using a 17” iMac with a second 17” LCD attached. The 15” PowerBook is my travel machine (I’m using it right now), and the 12” PowerBook is packed up and waiting for a buyer on Craigslist.

I’m reminded of the October 2005 Meet the Life Hackers article in the NY Times, where they discussed an experiment measuring productivity of people using a single 15” display against those using a huge multi-screen 42” setup:

On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly. They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains. Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve a user’s productivity. The clearer your screen, she found, the calmer your mind.

It’s true - it’s a huge difference for anyone who spends their day flipping between web pages, email, editors, terminals, and a myriad of other applications. Today, using the 15” PowerBook after months of the 12” PowerBook, I’m surprised at the almost palpable sense of relief I feel - it’s almost as if I was cramped in some tiny space while using the 12” PowerBook, and have only now been allowed to get out and stretch.

I’ve always held that the display - not the CPU - was the single most important piece of hardware as far as most users were concerned. It’s what you look at, day in and day out. I’ve seen the difference in folks when they moved to a larger screen - or even just a clearer and more legible one. The Times article last year was something nice to wave in the faces of some people I work with who still consider CPU uber-alles and decent displays to be for the realm of metrosexual design geeks (or overpaid dot-com leftovers). Jenni’s glee at her new dual-display setup, and my own relief at going back to the 15” PowerBook just serve to put it all finally to rest.

Perception is reality, one of my earlier supervisors told me - and a nice big screen (or screens) just allows you to, well, perceive more reality.

Posted by jim at September 20, 2006 04:15 PM