

ChaCha CEO Has Pretty Damn Sweet 8-Monitor Computer - gaz
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/chacha-ceo-has-pretty-damn-sweet-8-monitor-computer/

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RyanGWU82
MTV Teen Cribs aside, this guy's house is really, really sweet. Ridiculously
over-the-top, but sweet. There's a whole site dedicated to the house at
<http://www.scottajones.com/index.php?q=residence> .

How can he afford all this? Scott Jones is better known as the inventor of
voicemail. (!) His company built one of the earliest voicemail systems (1986)
and he holds a bunch of patents related to it. So he can afford an extravagant
house, especially since it's in Indiana.

For example: His master bathroom has a "waterfall shower" that streams 300
gallon per minute. Normal home showers are restricted to 2.5 GPM. But "because
this is a high-tech home, not an ounce of water is wasted. It is sanitized by
an ultraviolet-light disinfecting system, stored in a holding tank in the
basement and then recycled."
(<http://www.forbes.com/2002/05/17/0517home.html>)

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sokoloff
That slide is bad-ass.

And somehow I suspect the house is no longer connected to the 'net by just a
single "T1 line, which allows connection to the Internet at lightning speed."

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jwilliams
Can't see the video outside the US :| Wonder what the application for this is?
I can imagine maybe for trading and dashboard scenarios?

At an old workplace we did some unscientific usability testing on big screen
and multimonitor setups.

One thing I found was that 30" was too big. For me, flicking the mouse
required you to track your eyes/head too much. 27" was borderline, but I found
2x24" was the best setup for coding - one primary screen and one secondary
screen.

3x24" was quite good if you had a tertiary task - e.g. having chat/email/etc
open. For me though, this was just distracting. It was better as a task that I
switched in and out from.

Any more and the redundancy of screen real-estate started to be distracting
rather than useful.

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tallanvor
If you follow the MTV Cribs link below the embedded video, you can see it.
It's a bit over the top, but there are some nice areas there!

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symptic
Proof that success (at least in whatever past-life he came from) and wealth do
not equate to good taste. I like the library though.

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petercooper
I've seen a lot of comments - particularly on TechCrunch - relating to wealth
and how much this would cost.

In terms of cost, this sort of setup would not be expensive at all. I bet my
Mac Pro and 30" cost more and that wouldn't be considered outrageous. You can
buy 19" monitors for $200 a piece now, and the computer the guy has is really
low specced (only a P4 and 2GB of RAM) - if it cost more than $4500 I'd be
surprised. There are plenty of us with setups that cost more than that.

I'd say this setup is remarkable more because of the time it'd have taken to
set up and how original it is.. how many people have an exercise bike built
into their setup! :)

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dfranke
Eight monitors, but only a single-core CPU?

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smoody
and only two gig of ram? what does a gig of standard issue dram cost these
days? $89 perhaps? :-)

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iamelgringo
It's down to $20 a Gig: [http://www.frys-electronics-
ads.com/ads/2009/01/16/40166/Kin...](http://www.frys-electronics-
ads.com/ads/2009/01/16/40166/Kingston-2GB-DDR2-PC6400-Memory)

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MaysonL
Heck, I got 4G for $60 from Amazon last year.

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anotherjesse
I have a similar setup (well, same goal, completely different components):

    
    
      * 37" lcd 1080p (1920x1080) - less than $1000 a year ago, now $500
      * mac mini, apple wireless keyboard, microsoft bluetooth mouse
      * a schwin recumbant bike
    

I can roll the bike in front of the screen, grab the keyboard and exercise
while doing my non-coding activities: Google reader, checking social network
buzz, watching videos (such as TED), ...

Then when I'm done, I move the bike away and I connect the 1080p display to my
laptop (x60 running ubuntu) and I can hack with a large screen and my laptop's
screen being for irc/im/social apps.

I had a 30" high res LCD (apple/dell), but found them frustrating due to mouse
movement. Having a medium resolution screen (1080p is just about right for the
mouse), with not many dots per inch (so you don't squint) for emacs/firefox,
and a smaller auxiliary lcd for everything else.

At work I have 2 24" LCDs (rotated so they are taller than wider - 1920x1200
each), which works great as well, but wouldn't work for as well for the biking
setup.

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dice
The bike is a pretty cool idea. I could see myself pedaling to burn off extra
steam rather than just tapping my knee up and down.

Hook that thing up to a light or a series of LEDs and you've got enough whiz-
bangery to set off my OCD and force a continual state of working out.

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albertni
Personally, I prefer double vertical monitors (better for coding). But, when
you've got 8, I think it's safe to say you can pretty much set them up however
the hell you want.

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ggruschow
What do you use to get sub-pixel anti-aliasing (aka ClearType) in portrait
mode?

The higher-res anti-aliasing is the only thing that got me to switch from
CRTs. I've tried portrait mode for similar reasons, but the loss of quality
leaves me looking at pixels instead of characters or words.

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joshu
Additionally, while LCDs are same-color horizontally, it changes faintly
vertically. But since your eyes are also horizontal, there is no difference
noted. When you turn the monitor vertically, though, there is a bit of
color/differential/refraction to the different eyes. This drives me nuts.

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timf
Is that a Zenview monitor? They have an 8 monitor version.

<http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview.asp>

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dustineichler
aside from being really cool i've always wondered how useful this would be.
i'd lose whatever window i was flipping through and unless he's using some kvm
switch, minimally he's running at least 2 boxes. again, cool to look at... but
otherwise what good is it if you can't utilize all of it.

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cellis
i can only speak to having 3.

<https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/163594/IMG_0077.png>

I like it quite a bit...it helps especially when you have 3, 4,5 IDEs open and
don't feel like constantly resizing/maximizing them.

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wheels
The problem that I notice on two monitors already is that I really need focus-
follows-mind. I too often forget which monitor / app has the input focus and
start typing away in the other.

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okeumeni
I love to see people jealous of other people stuff, it shows they are still
human. Way to go TC!

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ashika
the recumbent bike thing seems a little douchey. doubly so given the guy's
gut. Medical imaging workstations seem much more humane- put everyting on a
hydraulic table so you can work comfortably sitting, standing or in a low
crouch waiting to strike

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vaksel
how much money did ChaCha pay Techcrunch to get all this coverage?

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spydez
You have to pay money to get TC to call you "fail"?

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falsestprophet
I would

