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The Academic's MacBook Display

G

GarrettB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 5, 2007
18
0
Denver, CO
Here's what I need -

Either a single largish monitor for use when my MacBook is home, to whichever size a MacBook will go (I've heard 24")

OR

Two cheaper widescreen monitors.

I'll be a graduate student soon with a whole lot of lovely PDFs to read and a lot of writing to do. Ideally I'd like to fit a healthy sized PDF on the screen, a word processing window and maybe a bibliographic reference manager. What size and type monitor would be appropriate to this task, and still moderately priced?

As for other things, I do some amateur photography, but I've been doing photo editing on a sub-par monitor for a long time. I don't think top of the line colors are necessary. Really, just a large workspace with enough quality not to kill my eyes as I pore over PDFs.

Any suggestions?

Also, is the Apple wireless keyboard worth the price tag?
 
You can't run dual external displays from a MacBook without going to the expense of something like the Matrox DualHead2Go.

I'd go for the single 23/24" screen - your Macbook can drive anything with a native resolution up to 1920x1200, which should be ample.
 
I echo tersono's advice. I always have at least two documents open and work quite efficiently with my 20" iMac. Often I also have papers, books all over my desk and appreciate the wireless keyboard not getting caught in the clutter.
 
Good to know that MacBooks cannot natively handle the dual monitor set up.

So, with a 20"-24" monitor in mind, are there any brand or "type" reccomendations? The world of monitors has eluded me for the past 4 years or so.
 
I used a MacBook with a 23" Apple ACD for a while. Works well as I was able to placed random stuff (like email) on the MacBook while leaving PDFs etc. on the main monitor. The ACD, however, is pricey. The Dell 24" has a good reputation also, but I've never used it myself.
 
GarrettB said:
Wait, so you can technically go dual monitors by having content on the open MacBook and an external display?
Click to expand...

Yes you can; you may have to turn off "mirroring" in the display preferences. Then the second monitor will act as an extension of the built-in display.

You can do it on any recent laptop (I assume also MBA, but I have tried personally only on MB and MBP).
Ditto for any iMac.
 
GarrettB said:
Wait, so you can technically go dual monitors by having content on the open MacBook and an external display?
Click to expand...

Yes, I've done this with both my 37" 1080p tv, and my Dell 20" widescreen. It works great - you'll just need the mini-dvi to dvi adapter, since the macbook does not have a full-sized dvi output connector.
 
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