Hacker News Reader

Comment by artogahr | Hacker News Reader

Im curious what work you do that you need that many 4k monitors, let alone 8k ones?

Not who you asked but its quite common in folks in Finance work (especially trading etc) to have 4-5 (or even more) monitor setup - they need to keep their eyes on the multiple blotters/charts simultaneously. In time-sensitive work, you can't afford to miss something happening on a window that is hidden behind others, visual comparisons can be super fast and reduce mistakes and switching windows is bothersome. I use a 43" along with two 24" inch monitors and programming with 8 split-panes (4x2) on the main one with chat/email/tailing logs on the other two makes things so much better.

This sounds like a great use case for VR workspace. Is that a thing yet ?

I haven't touched anything VR related since original Oculus - how far away are we from buying a 1000$ headset and it replacing all my monitors (and ideally I can travel with it) ?

Anyone here using such a setup ? What gear would you recommend ?

Yep, when I contacted Level1Techs to ask if their "1.4 Display Port KVM Switch - Dual Monitor - Four Computer" KVM switch would support it (the monitor needs 2 cables so you need a dual monitor KVM to make it work at 60Hz), the proprietor Wendel told me that indeed it does, they know a bunch of traders that use it with these monitors.

[1]: https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-kvm-d...

That way you can look at 20 charts simultaneously and the odds are at least one will be statistically significant.

The 8K (I only actually have one of these) is for coding. I normally go into an evangelistic fervor when somebody asks me about it, but I am on my way to dinner, so let me cut to the TL;DR:

The 280ppi of an 8K 31.5" display is so much better than the 220ppi or so of a 27" 5K or Apple's ludicrously expensive Pro Display XDR 6K display, that is it night and day and I couldn't ever go back.

Even though the Dell UP3128K is like 5+ years old, it is so much crisper and better than any other monitor I've ever seen (including that Apple and the 5K UltraFine popular with Mac heads).

I didn't even think my middle-aged eyes were good enough to have that matter at all — I cannot see pixels on the 220pi monitors. But after trying it, I realized seeing the pixels or not wasn't the right metric. It's way, way better, and almost everybody who stopped by when I had the Apple and the Dell side by side on the desk (I eventually sold the Apple, of course) said indeed they could totally see that the 280ppi screen was way better. So YMMV, but everybody should try it. :)

I completely switched from Mac to Linux, for all of my day job coding work, specifically and solely because of the monitor. (Almost no Macs support 8K monitors. The latest M2 Pro and better models do support 8K, but only on TVs at the moment (there are still no 32" HDMI monitors on the market yet, and Macs only support 8K via HDMI).

As for why I need 3-4 additional 4K monitors, those are only "needed" for music — which I do on the Mac. I like to just leave my virtual gear (guitar amps, effects boxes, synthesizers, etc) spread out, like I would in real life.

But since I do have them, I also use them for the usual multi-monitor stuff — put Slack and Discord out of the way on the far monitor, have one monitor for the browser and dev tools, code and terminals arranged on the other two, just to avoid having to context switch.

What scaling factor do you use on the 8K?

200%.

On Pop OS, my middle age eyes also liked to enable the Gnome option "Large Text" in the Accessibility settings. I haven't found the equivalent on KDE yet. But it still looks great and super crisp, just a little bit small.

System Settings -> Appearance -> Fonts

Reply on news.ycombinator.com