Who wouldn’t want a new high resolution display with thirty inches or more of real-estate upon which to spread your work?  Imagine the joy of having your entire spreadsheet visible at a glance and not having to futz around with freezing part of the pane.  Think of the pleasure of having two full pages displayed side by side, at a reasonable resolution no less, while editing your latest feature article.  Personally I find myself salivating at the idea of looking at the HD imagery from the Apollo missions and from the current ESA and NASA craft orbiting distant worlds.

Not that my intended use will help sell anyone’s boss, but if you’d like to turn the wistful daydream above into a practical reality for yourself, a recent report by Pfeiffer Consulting may actually have the ammunition you need to get that Apple Cinema Display you’ve been craving.

While most people would probably agree that one of those sexy big displays exudes uber-geek success and is the province of Avid and Final Cut Pro maestros everywhere, what is less well known is that these larger displays can boost general productivity using many more mundane applications.

Pfeiffer Consulting’s report called “The 30-ince Apple Cinema Display Productivity Benchmark” was intended to measure the real world productivity impact of using a larger size display.   The key underlying question they asked was:

Does this added comfort translate into higher productivity? To provide clear, activity-based data to answer this question was the aim of  his research project. 

In essence they wanted to do a clear comparison using more typical applications and see if the use of larger monitors yielded sufficient improvements in productivity that over time these increases generated a significant return on the investment (ROI).

The specifics can be found in the report which is in PDF form and can be downloaded for your reading pleasure.  For those of you that have better things to do that read a half a dozen pages of highly specific benchmarking detail, I suggest you print the report out for your boss and incorporate these quick summary findings into the email that briefs him on the wisdom behind your request for the glorious new display:

From the Report:

•  High-resplution displays such as the 30-inchApple Cinema HD Display can result in measurable productivity and efficiency gains.
• Productivity gains were present in not only professional design and publishing, digital imaging, and digital video, but also in general productivity and office applications  such as word processors and spreadsheets.
• Cumulative productivity gains linked to a large, high -resolution display can lead to a return on  investment (ROI) of several thousand dollars per year.

I swear I did not make a word of this up.  Scout’s Honor.

Should you find success with this approach and become the proud and oh-so-productive new owner of a sexy HD display,  don’t forget who shared this little tidbit of useful information with you and come and leave us a comment.  Better yet, when your friends come and jealously eye your new desk accessory, tell them how you got it and where you got the info…

Tags: Gadgets, Getting Things Done, Video //