Out with the old, in with the new – part 2

This weekend we had the carpets cleaned which required that we picked up everything off the floors.  In several rooms this meant stacking items on top of a bed or a couch.  When the guys were finished, seeing all that fresh empty real estate was inspiring. (I like open spaces in a house.) So we decided to take on to the task of trying to clean things up enough to keep the floors clear of clutter.  In my home office the job was to clean my desk of several years of paper and junk and to move out the G5 mac to make room for my new 8-core mac pro.

Let me interject that the task was too daunting for me to do alone and that my wife helped a great deal with organization. But the real clean up was my responsibility.  I wish I had taken a picture before starting the project, but here it is after almost everything was removed from the table.

Skipping ahead ahead a few hours, past the boring cleaning process and way past the awful disgustingness I found underneath my amplifier, I finally had my 8-core placed up on the sterilized Ikea desk ready to plug in to my monitor, mouse and keyboard.  But I quickly realized that Apple had also done some house cleaning.

Somewhere in the last few years they graduated from using ADC connectors for monitors to using DVI.  My otherwise perfectly fine 23″ Cinema Wide display (pictured) is ADC (apple display connector?). To use it with my new mac (or any modern video card) I’ll need a powered adaptor which runs $100 and some say is as bulky as a mac mini.  The other option is to purchase a new monitor and sell the old one.  There’s also the question of what to do with the old G5.  If I’m keeping it then I need to keep the Cinema display to go with it, since no other monitor I get will have ADC.  But the theme here is out with the old, in with the new, so keeping with the spirit of moving on, it should all go.

But wait! If I go out tomorrow and buy a new monitor what would it be? Just one week ago Apple dropped another bomb (one of several) by announcing that the new macbooks have yet another new video interface called Display Port.  Roughly Drafted Magazine has a great article today on the transition to the new port.  While I agree with Apple’s progress, I need more in a new monitor than just the one port built for the current Mac. About 10 YEARS ago I bought 2 Samsung SyncMaster 170MP LCD flat panels for around $1300 each. Four or five computers later, I still use them today because they have VGA, S-Video, speakers, a TV Tuner, PIP, etc.  In fact, since I can’t use my Apple monitor on the mac pro I’m using one right now.

Therefore my next monitor needs to have HDMI, DVI, HD Component Video and a Display Port so that I can use it for years to come with almost any video device.  Someday it may end up in Gillian’s room as a TV for BluRay or video games.  A quick search has led me to the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP, which appears to be very cool.  So I suppose within a few weeks I’ll be giving Dell a little MORE of my money… all in the name of cleaning out the old and moving forward.