I need to use both a Mac and PC, here's my setup:
http://www.mattdesmond.com/images/01_22_my_desk.jpg

I have a G4 laptop for when I'm on the go and a mega PC connected to a 23" cinema display for drawing letters, coding, surfing the web, etc. This setup seems to work very well and I'll probably upgrade the laptop to a faster model sometime this year. That, or I may get a G5 tower and get a KVM switch to share the 23" with the PC.

This would be my current 'set up'.: www.formlos.net/formlosBureau
( I am using an additional PC only every now and then, and only if I absolutely have to.. )

We have 4 PC. My own machine is a dual-proc WinXP-workstation with 2 x 3,06 Xenons. Monitors are 21" EIZOs, except for my own (sigh), which is a 23" ELSA-Ecomo 850. I gotta get rid of that thing, as soon as I have enough dough to get myself the EIZO CG 220. Wehave several external Big (Bigger) Disks, and alltogether some 3 or 4 TB RAID-Diskspace. I plan on buying an 8-disc-RAID-10 for more Diskspace. God, these jobs take up more and more Gigs, don't they??? All machines have Wacom Intuos Artpads (II or III, which I LOVE), wireless Logitech desktops (I'm using the di novo kit myself, very nice, although you should wait for the 2.0-version ;-), the 1.0 version has a very buggy bluetooth kit), and that's petty much it. The table is a 1,8 * 5,4 white Vitra Ad Usum Workbench, Chairs are Robert Office, sideboards are USM, the toilet seat is... ... what?... too much info? Okay, I shut up.
Frankly, apart for the machine itself, I never much cared for where I work. Of course, some music should be available ;-D. And online-access.

I've got a G4 tower at one desk that I used to use all the time, I barely touch it (my wife uses it now) now that I have the G4 PowerBook that I have with me all the time and that I do all of my work on. The 15" monitor is much better and the same size as the 17" CRT that's not in such good shape.

On the other side of our work room, I've got a pretty powerful AMD 64 PC w/ 17" CRT that I built, but that's really for gaming. Occasionally I use it for work when I have to test something on a PC or open something Windows-specific.

At my full-time job, I have an IBM that's mainly a web/email/interactive box and a spiffy quicksilver G4 with a big, honkin' Apple cinema display for the bulk of my work (both on one long desk). I used to have a KVM switch between the two and I'd use an MS optical mouse, Apple keyboard, and a 19" CRT. I found a switcher to be very space-efficient, but ultimately annoying since it affected key commmands and neutralized the on-keyboard volume and eject keys. When we switched to the Apple cinemas, I just got rid of it.

Also, a keyboard tray is now an obligatory feature of my desk.

My main machine is a G5 Dual 2.5, with a 23-inch Cinema Display. On a desk next to me there's a Mac mini 1.42 with an older 17 inch Cinema Display, equipped with an EyeTV - to watch and record television. I also try to do most of my downloading on that machine.
I also regularly use an upgraded Cube with a Cinema Display that's in the living room and an iBook 800 and a tangerine iBook, both with Airport, connected to one of two Aiport-networks I have set up. I mostly do surfing on those (and maybe some correspondence, sitting outside on the deck).
The tangerine iBook is the only machine with OS 9, the rest are Jaguar or Panther.

I used to use towers, but since I decamped to the UK for a year, I put everything on a G4 iBook. I perch it on an old bureau (with fold-down front), where's there's just enough room for that and my Wacom. The pigeon-holes in the bureau are the right size for CDs. I'm sitting on an antique office chair, and my shelving is antique too, which I all got at an auction.

At work, I have a win2K machine with dual monitors and my OSX powerbook laptop at my side.

At home, I have a linux server + a winXP box hooked up to a KVM switch. I also have a G4 tower hooked up to a separate monitor. And, usually, my laptop in there somewhere. I also have a 7200 laying around that I haven't had the heart to toss away yet. ;o)

I've gone back and forth on the two computer/two monitor senarios.

Long ago I had a Mac II with a large grayscale CRT and a small color CRT. Having two monitors was neat and people always went "wow!" when you moved something from one screen to the other. The real reason I did it was because it was less expensive than a large color CRT at the time.

Later on I decided that one large color display was the way to go (the prices eventually came down).

A few years ago I got a Powerbook G4 and rediscovered dual monitors. I hooked it up to a 22" Cinema display I had been using with a G4 Cube. I still wanted to use the Cube, so bought a cheap 17" LCD for it and had three monitors (all flat) and two computers on my desk. That seemed to be too much, so I got a KVM switch and had both computers hooked up to the Cinema display. It worked pretty well, except that OS 9 (what I was using the Cube for) sometimes crashed when I used the KVM switch.

Now I have a dual 1.8ghz G5 tower hooked up to the old 22" Cinema display and a new 20" Cinema display. This works well, but I can never get the color temperature to match between them. I'm not sure which one has better color balance, but it just reminds me not to trust what I see on the screen.

The Powerbook is off to the side now doing email duty and goes on road trips with me. The cheap LCD is now hooked up to an HP Windows PC under the desk which I use for testing fonts and so on. So now I have four monitors on my desk. At least they are all flat.

For type design, LCD is much better than CRT mainly because the geometry is perfectly square. The inescapable geometry distortions of CRTs used to drive me crazy. Dual monitors is also handy for type design. All those windows and panes in FontLab take up a lot of screen real estate and a second monitor really helps.

Stuart,

I've found that the optimal configuration for me is a Linux box running dual Opterons, hosting Windows XP through VMWare. Dual LCD monitors. I get the stability of Linux, a completely firewalled Windows, and they both run at the same time, on the same system. There's a "graphics workstation" elsewhere on the same floor of our offices that's a Mac, and I sometimes use it through VNC when I need to confirm a quirk in the Windows version of some program.

Our web designer uses a similar Linux box with Windows 98, Windows XP, Solaris and FreeBSD running in different VMWare tabs so she can test her pages on every imaginable browser. Her primary machine is a Mac.

Chris Swingley
Fairbanks Alaska

I'm with you Mark. I work on whatever feels comfortable, is affordable, and doesn't take up too much room. I don't take on-screen representation to be anything but an approximation, good or bad. So, for me, I prefer monitors that require the least amount of futzing and re-calibration.

Thanks All! I'm probably most familiar with many of Mark's comments in regards to that I agree for drawing vectors, nothing beats LCD, to that end, I also agree color temperature is best represented on a CRT.

In Design Tools Monthly, the HP L2335 flatscreen was given the higest recommendation compared to the Apple Cinema Displays so I'm thinking of just getting one monitor a switcher box, and selling the iMac and either getting a Mac mini or a G5 box. Problem is, that solution is about $2k from me at this time :D

In the short term, perhaps I should start looking for a new desk that I can put two computers on. After years at bad desks as a hungry Art Director, my back and neck have paid dearly so I got smart and started getting better desks . . .

Does anybody have a good desk recommendation for a two CPU situation?

Ideally it should have adjustable monitor heights and desktop . . . Ergonomics all the way! Actually the Aeron of the desk world would be ideal! In fact my current desk is from the short lived Heman Miller Red Rocket line of dot-com cubical workers. I like it but it's really only for one CPU, not two . . .

I'm all ears! This is a very useful discussion! Thanks all!

:D

I saw something really awesome yesterday. Dell has a new 24" 1920x1200 widescreen LCD that retails typically at $1199, and reportedly can be had around $800-900 on eBay. Model is Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW. One of my colleagues just got one, and it looks *very* nice. Also has "a four-port USB hub�two on the main connector panel, two on the side of the display. In addition, the unit has a 6-in-1 USB card reader that supports CompactFlash (type I and II), SD/mini-SD card, Sony Memory Stick / MS Pro, Smart Media and Hitachi Microdrive." Inputs: VGA, DVI, composite, component, and S-video.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1764466,00.asp

I agree with Stuart's comments on LCD vs. CRT. LCDs are great for drawing and vector work, but lousy for color. One big problem is that the color shifts depending on viewing angle. Though they've licked that in the horizontal, it's still a problem in the vertical. And the bigger the screen, the more your viewing angle will change from top to bottom.... sigh.

T

> And the bigger the screen, the more your viewing angle will change from top to bottom.... sigh.

That may depend on the display. On my two Cinema displays I see little if any color or brightness shift as I move my head (or the display) around. The Powerbook is a different story. The cheap LCD on my Windows box also shifts brightness considerably as I move my head up or down even a few inches.

After 5 years, I got a new system, with a 20" wide aspect Dell Ultrasharp monitor (2005PFW - a model below the one Thomas admired). You can rotate it to portrait also, depending on what you are working on. I adore it - even though all monitors are still pitiful compared to paper.

Things around here look like this:
http://www.processtypefoundry.com/desk/desk.html

I apologize for the blown out photo as it's a little bright today.
So aside from various switchers, routers, writing pens,
iPods, phones, specimen books and two sewing machines...
A 1.8 dual G5 with an older 20 inch
A G4 laptop with newer 20 inch
Some sort of Dell PC below
Hiding is a blue G3 with OS 9
HP Laser Jet 5000

The desk is two sheets of 4x8 plywood glued and finished together
with dining table legs from Room & Board.
How my partner/wife sits on the bench all day... sort of a crouch.

My dream set up would be a drawing-table-sized flat screen (set up like a drawing table, of course) with a pen interface and a slide-out keyboard. It doesn't seem that far fetched. Probably expensive, though.

My 20" iMac G4 does pretty much everything I need, but I guess the "second lump" would be Virtual PC, which I fire up on occasion to test websites in Internet Explorer. VPC is surprisingly snappy.

I also have a Linux box in another location with file storage, an FTP server, and a remote desktop server.

About twenty years ago, I drew this "dream computer" in MacPaint:



It's surprisingly similar to my current set up:

Except for the anti-gravity, of course.

hhp

:-)

It was just supposed to be kind of conceptual. The main idea was that it was a big flat screen, big enough to show a full page and other windows. There was no such thing in 1985, but it did seem like the sort of thing that might happen someday, and it has.

William, what resolution is the 2005PFW, and how much was it?

hhp

How many can't get by without their Wacom tablet? I am in the midst of deciding whether I need one or not.

My set is easypeasy: 17" 1gHz iMac G4, 768 ram. Sitting on top of an old sanyo amp. between a pair of B&W DM 303 speakers, with a Minolta Pagepro 1250e laser. No PC, don't really need one at this stage.

I have a dual monitor setup. I have an older pc and the monitor just failed. How can I toggle one of my dual monitors to this older pc? I want to maintain the dual monitor setup but when my primary pc is busy printing etc., I want to use my older pc. Is there an AB switch?