I could have an EIGHT-foot monitor, and I still wouldn't have anywhere to fit my MSN Messenger window!

When I ordered this twenty-two-incher from a reputable online hardware distributor, I thought that I had finally solved my screen management woes. With those extra inches of desktop space, surely I would be able to fit everything onscreen.

But even though I have just upgraded from a much smaller nineteen-inch monitor, I still can't see any of my bloody desktop icons!

How is this possible? I did the math. Looking at my calculations, which I had to Alt-Tab to find, I figured I should have an extra 23% of viewable area. Even with my resolution set at a remarkable 1680x1050 pixels, I still have no more room than I did previously. Even with tabbed browsing on my web browser, smaller icons and text, screen management is just as much of a task as it was before!

Okay. I can understand why these digital dilemmas happen with disk storage, because software applications grow larger and larger, requiring more and more drive space. 200 gigabyte drives quickly become filled with games, videos, MP3s, and all sorts of bloatware, forcing the end user to upgrade to a larger drive.

But a monitor? I know some games are designed to work in ultra-high resolution, but I'm still just using the same ordinary programs I've been running year after year. As far as I know, Outlook and Notepad still take up the same amount of desktop space.

I thought bigger was supposed to be better.

When I was running everything on a 19" flatscreen monitor, I was thrilled to have upgraded from my clunky old 17" CRT. The old thing was bulky and heavy, and caused a warp on the top of my desk from where the thing sat. During that upgrade, with some creative optimization, I somehow I managed to squeeze everything onto the new 19" screen.

But where did the extra space between 19" and 22" go?

Maybe the monitor manufacturers are scamming us. Maybe they're making the monitors larger, but somehow they've changed the way they measure pixel sizes (or the spaces in between the pixels), making them only appear to be bigger. Perhaps they somehow changed the technical parameters when we were all busy being impressed with the newer "digital" media. Yes! That's why sales reps are all pushing us on refresh rates, brightness, and contrast ratios instead of good old dots-per-inch!

You know, I was thinking of upgrading my theatre system from a 28" television to a 48" incher...but now I'm not so certain. Maybe I'll just sit closer to the TV, giving me the illusion of a much bigger screen!