There's an interesting message thread on Slashdot about what is the best monitor for development work. A few years ago at the TSX I was using two monitors, a 19" Dell monitor with 4:3 aspect ratio turned sideways into portrait mode and a 22" Samsung monitor with 16:9 aspect ratio as a secondary monitor. Having a monitor in portrait mode was great for working with Word and FrameMaker and it wasn't tall enough that I ran into problems with the screen looking odd at the top and bottom.
However, it's now almost impossible to find a 4:3 monitor; they're all 16:9 or 16:10 and optimized for gaming and graphics. I'm using a 4K 28" 16:9 ThinkSmart monitor now, running it at half resolution (1920 x 1080) which gives me fonts and UI elements that I can see comfortably. But it's less than ideal for text work, although I can get two windows side-by-side in Word if I wear my reading glasses. I did try it in portrait mode but it's just too high to be comfortable.
So what to do if you're a developer and want lots of text lines on your screen? The Slashdot thread offers many options, including one I hadn't thought of, using a modern television instead of a monitor. Modern TVs are cheap and work well in high-resolution modes, although some posters point out that you need to be careful with the cheaper models.
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