TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

Microsoft has an annoying habit of rebooting my machine.  Yes, I know why they do this.  It is still annoying. I still use a VGA/PS2 KVM.  Old school, sure, but it has two great advantages - it lets me control all my PCs and it works. When MS decides to push out a reboot, and my KVM is set to a PC other than my main workstation, the main workstation display settings get confused.  The KVM-ed monitor will sometimes get stuck as "Generic Plug & Play Monitor" at the wrong resolution. Worse, the 'correct' resolution is not listed in the standard Windows 7 display settings.  There is no option to force that resolution. Resetting the KVM and rebooting the workstation should fix it, but sometimes does not.  Pressing "Detect" in the W7 display settings also does not fix anything, although it really should. In this situation, I have found that simply opening up the ATI Catalyst Control Center will automatically fix the problem.  This means going t...

As the title says.  They WILL fit, with an inch or so per side to spare. OBVIOUSLY, you will not have any clearance to rotate the monitors from portrait to landscape.  I can't imagine this will deter too many people. With the Acer's going for about $135 each, this is a damn good package with tons of LCD real estate.

Gridmove is a fabulous little utility for those of us with lots of screen real estate to manage. Having become somewhat addicted to Gridmove, I was sore to see that the default .grid files didn't support my new third monitor. Fortunately, this was easier to fix than I thought.  If you're interested in custom grids, skip the help file - it's loaded with terminology.  Just open up an existing .grid file with notepad, you'll see how it hangs together pretty fast. Here's the grid.   All I did was expand it to three monitors.  Eventually I might delete the elements I don't use, but it works well as-is.

Today I decided I'd like to watch a bit of film on my brand-spankin' new workstation.  I haven't even so much as popped a DVD in the drive yet. I try it and Windows Media Player has no sound.  Probably doesn't understand AC3.  I could have tried to hack in the codec, but I'm rather partial to WinDVD anyway. After buying (gasp!) and installing WinDVD Pro 2010, I fire it up.  Looks good!  Lots of nice logos. Until I get about three seconds into my movie, only to see "Your display environment does not support protected content playback."  WTF!?! So it turns out that the "new" players simply do not like multimonitor setups.  Apparently, without HDMI to "properly" protect the digital signal, it can't "guarantee" that my triple monitor setup isn't some kind of surrogate for a devious copy-protection bypass mechanism. So I've gone and sprung for a beautiful triple monitor setup, with requisite massive (and expen...

For whatever reason, Adobe Acrobat will not properly repaint the screen when resizing internal windows.  It 'sticks' the image at the previous window size. The only fix I've found so far is to show or hide a secondary pane, such as the bookmarks.  This forces Acrobat to repaint the screen to the new scaling. This problem may be unique to my FirePro 8800 triple monitor setup, or it might be a W7 thing, I'm not sure.  Acrobat is not the only program having this problem, but it is by far the worst. [Addition]:  You can quickly force a refresh with F4.

Having had my stand set up for a week or so, I do like it. The weight-assist mechanisms are set to the stiffest possible setting at the factory.  However, you can crank them down to minimum without bother.  The mechanisms never become loose or floppy, and it's designed so you can't accidentally unbolt anything. My 19/22/19 setup does just fine at minimum stiffness.  It doesn't sag or move around on it's own. The final height of my monitors did change, but after the first two hours I stopped noticing.  So by the next day you'll have forgotten anything was different. Overall, I would recommend this unit.  It is well made and does a good job. It's a good price - comparatively speaking, of course.  I spotted a comparable system at a local shop for $1800 with monitors - that's $600 per monitor, well over what each of those 23" LCDs are worth.  Granted, it looked totally slick, used a different mounting system that guaranteed perfect alignment of...

I've mounted my existing dual-monitor setup on my Ergotron.  Everything pretty much went as expected. The tipping hazard mentioned by others is real, but is not necessarily a given.  If you have relatively small side monitors, the unit won't tip over.  Put monsters on it and all you need are a few books to brace the unit while you mount monitor #3. Because I have mismatched monitors, the bezels do not perfectly line up.  Part of the problem is the depth (thickness) of each monitor is different.  If you have a thicker monitor in one position, the bezel will be closer to you than the bezel of the neighboring monitor. This didn't bother me - I kind of expected it - and like most other reviewers don't even notice it when using the system.  If you're a perfectionist with unrealistic expectations, trust me - you'll get over the "problem" in no time. The spring-assist mechanisms in the unit are very strong, and were set to maximum from the factory.  M...

To go with my new workstation I invested in a Ergotron LX Triple Display Stand (#33-296-195).  It seems expensive, but given what you get it really isn't. I will post some pictures eventually.  To get an idea of the size of this thing, watch the YouTube video here, courtesy of motherboards.org . Obviously it's large, so one significant concern I had was how (or if) it would fit on my desk.  Unless you have a deep 'boss' desk, you might be restricted as to the total depth you have available. As you can see in promo pictures, the stand has a foot, a post, an arm, and a mount that joins the arm to the post.  In my case, the size and positioning of the mount was important, because I wanted to put a shelf behind the stand. A few points that may be helpful on this stand: The stand will need to be about 9-1/2" away from the front edge of your desk, minimum.  Otherwise you won't really have enough space to make a standard keyboard work. The mount sticks out...