Greg P is an IT developer, web master and Dad living in the Puget Sound area of Washington state. His setup is a 24″ alumninium iMac with a vertical Samsung 740BX 17″ LCD.

The setup up close.

The setup in context.

To get them spanning correctly and at the correct orientations across the two screens Greg uses a custom Photoshop template with cropping masks of each monitor. The original wallpaper is dropped in behind, scaled and positioned as desired, cropped and exported to “left and a “right” directories with the same filename.

As an ex-dual-screen-computer-user, now a single screen 24″ iMac user this setup is exactly what I’ve been looking at trying. Greg says there’s polarisation issues with the vertical screen as it’s not made to be viewed at that orientation but it’s simply a matter of getting used to it before forgetting it’s even there.

The widescreen plus portrait screen setup makes sense. Some applications: mail, websites, documents, are more ideally suited to great horizontal space while others: image and video editing, calendars and movie watching, are suited to a widescreen landscape setup.

I’m impressed with Greg’s setup and the way he uses Panedia wallpaper but I’m jealous of his real, panoramic views of Puget Sound, Seattle and Mt Rainier from his home and office: