Technology & IT | Friday 17 April, 2015 12:03 am |

Spring! Finally, the days are getting longer again and the weather gets warmer. Most people want to go outdoors and try to make the best out of bright evenings. But already a new email is blinking up, a colleague is still waiting for a return call and a document also needs to be finished.
In these moments, many wish the day had 30 hours. However, having more time is often not the only solution. Frequently, it is the little things that already help to make work less stressful and more effective. MMD, a leading technology company and brand license partner for Philips Monitors, gives advice on how to make your day more productive and use time efficiently:
Tip 1: Make room and organize
To regain a better overview on upcoming work and the necessary materials for it, it helps to clean up your desk – this also applies to your PC desktop. Next to moving unused files in a folder or the recycle bin, the right equipment also helps. On a monitor with a large format, multiple windows can be well-organized next to each other. This allows you viewing more information at a glance, hence make better sense of complex information from multiple sources and complete tasks faster. For example the Philips BDM4065UC offers vast 40 inches, so plenty of room to spread out.


Moreover, one large display can replace a dual-monitor configuration which is today commonly used for data-intensive applications, e.g. in finance. A screen with 34 inches with a 21:9 ratio is equivalent in terms of information focus to two 24-inch screens, but with the advantage of occupying less space on the desk, saving power, and eliminating the distracting gap between two screens. By now, there are also such monitors which enable parallel viewing of two streams from separate devices, e.g. the Philips BDM3470UP.


Tip 2: Create a dedicated work zone
A big screen also allows the space to be divided into multiple zones. A good way to use it is to establish a work zone as a primary focus: Place the current, most important, task in the centre, and devote the rest of the space to organization and consultation-related tasks, for example mail or messenger applications. This helps to better handle distractions like a mail bleeping on the screen or a pop-up reminder. These interruptions take our mind off the task at hand, often requiring us to open a new document, check our inbox, or pull up some data for a colleague. On a small display, these fresh demands can sink the original task without trace: it is simply no longer visible, and users are more likely, amid a constant stream of interruptions, to forget what they were doing in the first place. With larger displays, people are more likely to get back on task quickly.
Tip 3: Get more detail
Increasing the size of the display creates more physical viewing and working area. However, this would be ineffective without increases in screen resolution. Keeping the standard image resolution unchanged will deliver substandard image quality that causes eyestrain, makes text difficult to decipher, and renders detail-reliant applications such as graphic design impossible to work with. Hence, technologies that deliver super-fine resolutions, with pixel densities beyond HD, are increasingly in demand.
QHD (Quad High Definition) provides a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels per inch. With many new notebooks now featuring QHD resolution, a QHD external display ensures that notebook users have the same image resolution on an external screen as they do on their notebook. An even finer resolution is UHD (Ultra High Definition), also termed 4K resolution, which packs four times as many pixels per inch of screen as Full HD and delivers four times the clarity. This can be found for example in the Philips 288P6LJEB. These high resolutions allow for pixel-precise editing of on-screen elements. Furthermore, there is less need for zooming and scrolling, and fewer mouse movements have been shown to reduce strain on the arms and hands.

Following these advices will help office workers to boost productivity while working more comfortably. It will also allow them to make full usage of their leisure time, which leads to more motivation and in return to a better working climate. Now only the weather has to be good.