Like an old car, it seems that as we get older, bits of us pack up, slow down or need a de-coke. Or more likely and legally, a de-wine, or insert favourite over-indulgence here. Get to 30 and your looks start fading. By 40 teeth need regular attention. When 50 comes around, eyesight decreases and 7 point text might as well be on the moon. Something the Dennis Publishing designers could take notice of.

In some respects, reading on-screen helps. Not only are things a comfortable distance away, screen contrast and brilliance can be adjusted and things resized to make reading more comfortable. Then only two problems remain; one is wearing vari-focus spectacles that never seem to have the right part in the right place to make the screen in focus. The second is using a monitor that is just not big enough. It doesn’t help having to design A3-landscape pages on a 17″ monitor, either.

If too many windows, pallets and dialogue boxes are getting in the way, it is worth balancing the cost of a new screen against using software solutions such as a virtual desktop manager to help take the strain. The latter have been around for years since their introduction as Amiga OS scrolling desktops in 1985. Unix and Linux have had virtual desktops since the dawn of time, Windows XP has them but Microsoft’s own Power Tools only works with US regional settings and is unsupported. The Mac world saw the world’s first commercial desktop manager, Stepping Out, in 1986 and currently there are at least three contenders, two of which are free. These are most likely doomed to the dustbin when the next version of Mac OS X is released with Apple’s Spaces desktop manager built in.

VirtueDesktops was chosen to test the theory – a simple matter of double clicking to run the program. As a free piece of software, VirtueDesktops does exactly what it says it should. Just about everything can be set to personal preferences, each desktop can have its own pattern and applications can be ’stuck’ to a certain desktop. The transition effects are neat too.

After a day of complete confusion, losing track of what application was open in which desktop, virtual desktops gave me brain strain and didn’t really help anyway. They are more for people who like to have ‘environments’. Where, for example: one desktop can be set aside for programming and coding, with all the paraphernalia it involves. Another can be used for different browsers and web creation tools; a third desktop for whatever else you want open, and so on. Most Mac design software is well integrated so that clicking on a graphic in a page layout program results in Photoshop or Illustrator automatically coming to the fore to edit it. The other built-in tools of the Mac’s operating system cope with screen clutter created by multiple applications open at the same time.

For me, the only solution is to buy a new monitor. Not a second one to run side by side, as used in the early 1990’s, along with another Mac to drive it. The screen needs to be a 23″ or larger and will come complete with a price tag that increases exponentially with size and quality. On the other hand, just a couple of years ago their price would have bought a pretty decent family car. Even now for their present price I bought a reliable Toyota pick-up last year, when renovating my house.

What a dilemma! How does one decide between an Apple 23″ display, Eizo 24″, NEC 21″ or a diesel Toyota Hiace?