[rdl]

Wow. This is much more what I'd expect from a scifi writer, or really anyone who uses a computer all day professionally.

Have you considered Microsoft Office 2011 for office documents? I agree about the ribbon, but it is better than the free alternatives.

Why not upgrade to the 27" or a dell u3011 now, and mba11 later?

Also, backups?

[cstross]

Office 11: Well, giving money to the Beast of Redmond goes against the grain a little, and in any event publishing tends to run on Office 97/2000/2003 .doc files, not .docx. Publishing is conservative for structural reasons. (I'd rather hand in markdown files or even LaTeX or similar, but unfortunately they've standardized on Office documents, dammit. Because "that's what everyone uses".)

The 27" ... well, I upgraded my wife's side of the office to one earlier this year (pre-Thunderbolt) and there's a limit to the depth of my pockets. Besides which, my desk is already dwarfed by the 23" panel (and said desk is an obscure 1970's Swedish designer item, not something I'm likely to replace in a hurry).

Backups: Time Capsule for on-site, 1Tb pocket hard disk for on the road, and Dropbox as a sync solution and if-all-else-burns-to-the-ground fallback.

[rdl]

Microsoft BizSpark (for your tech business, whatever) could get you free Microsoft products via MSDN, if you really wanted them.

My solution to big monitors and small desks is a VESA arm mount and either a wall/floor stand or a desk stand; give in to the monitor being bigger than the desk!