External screen setup for Studio 1555

Hi all,

I've been doing more and more programming lately and am finding it increasingly frustrating flicking through a dozen windows on my 15.6inch Studio. It already has a 1080p screen but it still is a pain and the prolonged hours staring at small texts is proving to be rather tiring for my eyes.

I've decided to buy an external monitor to solve this problem and use it as a dual screen but I'm unsure how to go about it. Here are my questions please bear with me )

Postition - To keep the consistency I'd like to get a 1080p monitor to match and the ones I've been looking at are 22/23inchs. With my laptop being 15.6, how do I best position them? Would side by side be awkward?(one big one small) Also this way, as the keyboard is on the laptop, I'll be facing square to the 15.6 and looking right/left to the other, will it work? Or how about top and bottom? How do I go about setting up my external at such height? Even the ones come with height adjustment stand doesn't allow the monitor to be positioned so high(about 10inches so to sit comfortable on top of my laptop)

Connection - My Studio has a blu-ray player so a hdmi output as well as a standard d-sub output. The external monitor has a dvi-d and a d-sub input. The ones with a hdmi input is more expensive. Since the speaker on this size screen are no good anyway so the fact that dvi-d doesn't carry sound is not important to me. So, how would these compared in terms of picture quality? hdmi to hdmi; hdmi to dvi-d; d-sub to d-sub and d-sub to dvi-d(poss)?

I would really appreciate your input. Please share your valuable experience.(My wife is already not very pleased with me buying a monitor. She thinks I should 'make do' with what I've got. The last thing I want it not get it to work and let it sit there and gather dust. )

My main objective of this purchase is to help me work more efficiently. Do you have other suggestions? Thank you for your patience.

Tom

 

Help? Anyone please?

 

I've been using my inspiron e1505 (15.4" 1680x1050) with 20in lcd (1680x1050) on the left. The external monitor is the main one and I use the laptop screen as an auxiliary one. Very convenient.

 

Thanks for your reply. Do you use the notebook keyboard or an external keyboard?

 

I use an external keyboard... makes life easier

 

Thank you.