Well, it is so much easier for me to design and develop my sites on my laptops that I can’t see doing it on my desktop computer any longer..

Both of my laptops are wide screen..and the sites’ colors look rich..

But when I view my sites on a regular monitor. yikes! the colors look dull, things look cramped.. I just don’t like it…

How many of you work strictly on laptops and how do you compensate for the difference in screen output?

I don’t think its merely a problem of devoling on the notebook versus a desktop pc. The problem is the non-existing calibration of output systems, here especially CRTs, LCDs and so on. Using an LCD for my desktop since a couple of month after using CRTs all the years before really gave me a similar experience. And I have a client that is working with 15” CRTs in the office, some set to 16bit color and 800x600 resolution. She’s always disappointed about nearly every website she finds. Showing them on a new notebook brings some ah’s and oh’s, but all the time the management has refused to update the environment.

There are some calibration tools (combined hardware sensor and software) available that aren’t that expensive - but it only shifts the problem because in most projects you aren’t able to calibrate the displays for your clients and their users as well.

-Markus

I have built several sites on an 11” sony vaio - it is painful, and you really do need access to larger, more standard screen-sizes and resolutions to make sure that testing is done thoroughly.  When I don’t have that, I make friends look and help me out. 

The ability to be able to develop/bug check on a small screen can be quite the luxury, don’t knock it ;]

Right until you look at my personal site in IE on WM5, as I do from my Cingular 8125, then shudder and think about *anything else*

I always shudder when I see my sites displayed on a cheap LCD set to 800x600, with all my colors shifted to something unrecognizable. Unfortunately, there at LOT of cheap LCD displays out there set to 800x600, where all my colors shift to something unrecognizable. 

(I develop on a 24-inch iMac and a 15-inch MacBook Pro.)