More Mobile: External Display (Premium)

The appearance of a new HP Conferencing Monitor for review has thrown a (temporary?) wrench into my More Mobile computing setup. But then, that’s sort of the point, isn’t? Keep trying new things and see what sticks.

To date---by which I mean, since about last September---I’ve been using a docked laptop setup at my desk, using only the laptop’s built-in display. This works well for me, though I very much prefer larger laptops for their bigger displays: 15.1-inches is better than 14-inches is better than 13.3-inches.

But that configuration is, I think, somewhat unusual. And I suspect that the most common configuration for people who do primarily or only use laptops is to just use the laptop, with no dock or mess or peripherals. And the second most common---again, just guessing here---is a laptop connected to an external desktop display (and possibly a desktop keyboard and mouse).

That second type of setup is so common, and its use cases so obvious, it almost doesn’t require explanation. In fact, even my wife, as normal a person as there can be, uses this setup each day. But remember that I’m no fan of dual displays, despite many, many attempts throughout the years. I can’t explain why. I just prefer using a single screen.

But I keep trying. And with my newer More Mobile setup, I’ve experimented with two configurations that involve dual displays. One with a portable (USB-C based) secondary display. And one with the more standard desktop display configuration. I last tried that latter setup about a month ago, with the 27-inch HP Z27n G2 1440 display I was using before my switch to the More Mobile setup. What I found at that time was that the smaller IKEA desk I had also switched to during this process wasn’t deep enough to use the HP display comfortably. The display was just too big too big to be that close. And so I moved on.

But then HP offered me an E27m G4 QHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor for review. And I thought, OK, I can make this work, if only temporarily. I just needed to figure out the desk.

My wife and I were in Philadelphia overnight about two weeks ago for a concert, and the local IKEA---which isn’t all that local, really---is on the way home, so we swung through there in part to see if I could find an inexpensive little desk, stand, or cabinet that I could position behind my office desk and sit the display upon it. And, I probably could have gotten something for under $100, but it seemed semi-pointless, and I eventually decided that we must have something at home that would work. Probably something in one of the kids’ rooms, since no one is using anything in either of those rooms right now.

When we got home, I couldn’t find anything suitable, but walking back into my office, I spied a metal rollable shelfing unit I wasn’t using for much of anything. And I just went with that, placing it behind the desk. What the heck.

And it actually works pretty well, though it was obvious that I�...