I upgraded to an ultra-wide later than I would have liked for a very simple reason: my budget wouldn’t allow it. Not because of the monitor itself, as it’s a relatively affordable product, but because I’m a Mac user. My work computer was a fairly recent iMac, and although I had already had to buy a Flash hard drive for it to improve its performance , still did me good service. AND Since it was a computer with a built-in screen, there was no middle ground: either I changed everything or I continued with my iMac.
After a few months of saving and reflection, I arrived at the desired solution: I would not only change my monitor, but also my computer. I bought a Mac Mini that I had wanted to have for a long time and that suited my needs (I had more than enough power to write, but not so much to edit audio and video), as well as the long-awaited ultra-widescreen. The chosen model, for which my colleague Juan Carlos López advised me, was a 35-inch LG LED 35WN75C-W. Curved to make the most of space, with an aspect ratio of 21:9 and at a moderately reasonable price: around 600 euros, although since my purchase it can be found for around 50 less.
The first sensation cannot be said to be unexpected, but it made me momentarily put my hands to my head: “I’ve gone too far.” And I quickly began to speculate about the possibility of backing down and going back to what was my main alternative: continue using a conventional monitor and a second screen, such as a laptop or a small monitor, as an addition. Again, being a Mac user made things a little more complicated for me, but it was a possibility. Of course, Before letting myself be carried away by neurosis and becoming a protagonist in a Poe story, I gave the invention a few hours.
It only took me a few hours to convince myself that (for once) I was right: the ultra-wide monitor made my day-to-day work much easier, and a year later I have only one drawback. When out of necessity I have to work on a conventional monitor or just with my laptop, it’s like doing it again on an 8-bit computer: everything seems prehistoric and very impractical. But let’s see in which aspects my experience improved.
I’m going to focus almost exclusively on what has improved my experience to work, which ninety percent of the time is writing. My partner Jose García already spoke about his experience with an ultrawide, but adding the experience gaming and, therefore, going into more technical details. I also use the monitor to watch movies and play games and the experience is remarkable -as is logical- but today we are going to talk exclusively about writing.
thousands of windows
Due to the nature of my work, it is convenient for me to work with multiple windows open simultaneously. At least one in which I write and another in which I consult additional texts, documentation, videos, etc. On a screen with traditional dimensions, in order not to reduce the size too much, these different fonts were browser tabs, with the consequent inconvenience when it comes to maintaining a certain pace of work, and continually stopping writing to consult data.
Currently, I organize myself in the following way: the monitor is divided into three spaces, which normally occupy three windows of the same internet browser, since I hardly use applications in daily work. Ninety percent of my tasks are done online, so the three windows (the monitor, like almost all of this type, includes its own application to help organize the desktop) are: first, on the left, a block of tabs where there are pages that I should have open, but not necessarily in continuous view (Whatsapp, Gmail, Slack and other pages that I use to manage work).
The second of these three columns is the central one, where I write: the Xataka post editing page, or whatever document I am currently editing (often from the Google ecosystem). Finally, on the right, the websites that you are consulting as documentation or even Tweetdeck (whose stream of tweets I like to have open as a headline feed), Youtube, Spotify, etc. This division, of course, would not be possible on a monitor of normal proportions, where the division in two is already ridiculous.
The workflow, as is logical and as I said above, has improved a lot. I can be writing almost continuously, stopping only when I see something happening on the screen that requires my attention. It’s a leap that is sometimes excessive: too much productivity for a human, if you will. In any case, there is no going back.
To these advantages is added, of course, the higher image quality compared to previous monitors that I have used and which is allowing me to also use it as a monitor to play, which is unquestionably very useful when, as it happens to me, playing is difficult. often part of my job. This would have been achieved with any monitor, it is obvious, but in my case and due to the history with Mac that I have related to you, it is the first time that I have been able to enjoy it.
The biggest difference I have noticed, as I tell you, in a total revolution of my workspace, and that is accentuated even when I do very specific tasks like video editing. But I don’t have to sell publishers any of the advantages of ultrawide displays because they are so familiar with them and ultrawide monitors have become standard in their work. Here I have preferred to focus on the practical part of a task as simple as writing, where, to be frank, I did not expect such an absolute revolution. Next step: there is no next step, I am already in the galaxy state of mind.
