In the good old days, when I used
to read PC Magazine from cover to cover, I seem to recall
seeing advertisements for pivoting CRT monitors.
Using my word processing software with a standard
monochrome monitor in landscape mode, I could only ever
see part of the page I was working on, and I
drooled at the thought of
being able to spin the screen through 90 degrees and
display the entire page. Well, now, with LCD
monitor technology, and a copy of Pivot Pro, I can do
exactly that, and it's great!
Once installed, Pivot
Pro's icon is visible in the task bar and actuating the
program provides options to rotate the display to 0, 90,
180, or 270 degrees. Selecting the 90 degree option
instantly switches the screen into portrait mode.
Rotate the screen to the
vertical and Microsoft Word, running on a 17-inch LCD
monitor (1280 x 1024 resolution), can now display a full
page of text at pretty much full (8.5x11")
size. Similarly, one can view full pages of OPCUG's
newsletter using Adobe's Acrobat Reader (see
figure). And, with Internet Explorer, you can view
more of your favourite web site without having to scroll
down the page.
Pivot Pro works with the
Windows 98 SE, 2000, NT 4.0, ME, and XP operating
systems, and with Internet Explorer 5.0 as a web
browser. All major brands of graphic cards are
supported (check the web site for details), and there no
limitation on supported resolution or refresh rate.
If you have a pivoting
LCD monitor (or are prepared to stand your fixed monitor
on its side!), Pivot Pro may just be the driver you have
been looking for. A number of computing tasks are
just so much easier when you can view information in a
more convenient format.
Bottom Line:
Pivot Pro (Proprietary)
Portrait Displays, Inc
US $ 39.95 (download)
Free 30-day trial version
http://personalcomputing.portrait.com/us/products/pp_overview.html
Originally published: June, 2004
