WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CURSOR?
WHERE THE FUCK IS THE CURSOR?
My parents were 911 dispatchers for decades. It’s how they met. They had 7 monitors last time I visited them at work 20 years ago. Their applications seemed to be built on the idea they had multiple monitors worth of space that they’d be stretched across.
If I remember accurately, there were 2 computers (and thus 2 mice and 2 keyboards). The first computer had 5 monitors and was the Google Maps equivalent for where all the active ambulances in the city were. The main application stretched across multiple monitors and had sub-windows with different operations in them. I think it also managed the radio between dispatcher and ambulance. The second computer was dedicated to the phone, the caller, any history attached to the phone number, and all the data 911 gets about your location. It took up the remaining few monitors. By now it’s probably 1 computer and even more monitors.
Yeah, but not that many.
Usual setup nowadays: One monitor for the main CAD (computer aided dispatch) forms, one for map overview, eventually a third one for a unit overview(theye are often done on the map monitor these days), one for external data (browser window, video feeds,etc.), one below as a touchscreen for communication control (VoIP/Radio).
Most EMS Dispatch clients I have switched to a three+one touch setup ages by now and rather use a central dashboard for some less important views and feeds.
Reminds me of the workstation from “Halle Berry’s Breasts: The Movie” Swordfish.
“Halle Berry’s Breasts: The Movie” We need more of these
Reminds me of VirtualBox on Wayland. It won’t correctly capture the mouse, so it just exits and re-enters the window in random positions. Say, on guest you see it in middle left, you move it a bit to the right, and it jumps out of bottom right corner.
So, time to have a second mouse, and do USB passthrough.
But also UEFI on my HP mini PC doesn’t work with every keyboard, so a second keyboard for UEFI.
Redundancy for a keyboard and mouse? Keep an extra set in the drawer or something. No need to have them all out and connected. Simplicity? How is it simpler to have multiple input devices littered about than once set? Speed? Speed of what? Of input? The latency on a KVM is negligible, particularly for an IO device? Speed of swapping? With multiple keyboards and mice, you have up manually move around devices and/or your body. With a KVM, you press a button. How is that slower?
Physical context switching is the only thing I’ll grant you, but I don’t see how that’s such a benefit compared to the hassle, clutter, and hectic work flow when you can just use a KVM.
I’ve seen stock traders where everyone on the floor had half that many. A few of them had 9.
When they’re looking up trades or news, they open a ridiculous number of windows while doing research.
They have 4 screens just to watch the markets and handle in-house controls.
What’s striking about this is the amount of whitespace on the screens. They are only using 1/2 - 1/4 of their screen space.
I work in ATC and we have several desks with around 12 to 18 screens. Not in that layout tho, but on a much larger banana form.
They are used at different work positions, mostly for monitoring but also used with keyboard and mouse.
The applications goes from technical surveillance of ops systems, to flow capacity (airspace capacity), meteo broadcast for all airports (ATIS) or ground-ground telecommunications of aeronautical data.