Its been a while since I have posted on my blog. I should at least note that I will be speaking at MySQL User Conf in Santa Clara as well as php|tek in Chicago. Aside from that I am working a little bit on improving Doctrine a very promising DBAL/ORM based on PDO for PHP. Anyways lets get back to the original topic which has nothing to do with PHP or databases directly, but might also be of concern to all of you still. Since I am now in the consulting business I am spending a lot of time working at client premises using my laptop. I really miss an external monitor though. I find it highly unproductive to alt+tab between my editor and the browser or some documentation all the time.
So I am thinking there must be luggable monitors. I mean there must be a market for this stuff, because I know I am not the only consultant in the world. Actually there are quite a lot of us and we tend to pay up for tech stuff that increases productivity.
Essentially what I am looking for is a second notebook screen. But a 17" in the 2-3 kg range including all the necessary equipment would do. It should come with some transport protecting obviously and should be able to handle different voltages. I does not need fast display times or be all that fancy. A viewing angle of 150+ or more thats it. Does something like this exist?
The best I found was the Sony SDM-E67D which comes in at 4.5 kg, 17" with 1280x1024 res and 160/160 viewing angle. Obviously no transport protection, though I guess that could be solved by going to some home department store and adding another 100-200 grams to the overall weight. I do have some experience lugging my 20" TFT in my carry on sized trolly from Berlin and Zurich. I even checked it and it survived the trip. But I would appreciate something even lighter.
Anyways maybe the solution is looking for a broken laptop with an intact screen and with some soldering fun to attach a standard monitor connector. If someone has come across something like this please let me know.
I know that Shuttle has some, but according to their specs they are heavier than what you're looking for. On the plus side, I've heard they are very resistant.
Maybe you should ask around in a gamers community, they're used to travel with their hardware. HTH.
Don't count on being able to add a standard monitor connection to a laptop that has none: I understand that the connection between the screen and the laptop usually has nothing to do with standard VGA, as much of the processing that the screen needs to do is moved into the laptop itself.
Thank you for those hints. The Shuttle stuff at least looks like what I want. The high weight is a huge drawback though. The lightest ones come in at 6.4 kg. They also use an external power supply. Luggable things should have as little separate parts you can forget imho. But that carrying bag is very cool. However the full bundle is pretty expensive.
For now I will try to checkout the Sony in a store to get a better idea if the weight is really 4.5 kg. Many makers do not list the entire weight. I also need to make sure that I can secure the screen easily for travel.
You could just specify in your contracts that the client must provide a monitor on site...
regards,
Rob....
Yeah, thats the other thing I am trying to get my employer to consider. However they have never done so in the past. I fear that without an initial initiative from me to make everybody jealous it will not happen ;-)
As a gamer who travels to a lot of lans, geargrip products are good. Doesn't help with the weight of the monitor, but allows you to carry the monitor a lot easier, and offers a lot of protection for the screen. Also has a pocket for storing cables in.
Can you please tell me more about your involvement in Doctrine and the future plans for the project? It looks very good, but before trying to put it in one of my applications I'd like to know if there's a solid future for the project. Thanks
@Frank: Basically I am working through the code bottom up .. as in I am mainly looking at the MDB2 code ported to PDO. So I have not spend much time on the ORM stuff. I also pushed for using a standard coding style and some architectural stuff. Also Doctrine is slowly making inroads to replace Propel in symfony.
