Windows only: Free application Calibrize holds your hand through a simple three-step monitor calibration to ensure on-screen colours look the same from computer to computer. Once you've run the application and adjusted the colour profile to its specifications, Calibrize saves the profile and automatically installs it on your system so the right colour profile always loads up. It's quick and simple, especially if you don't know much about screen calibration to begin with. For a no-download alternative, check out previously mentioned Screen Check. Calibrize is freeware, Windows only.

DIY weblog Hackosis details how to fix your scratched LCD monitor after a scarring encounter with a sharp object. The post offers two different methods for addressing the LCD scratches, from a temporary fix involving a little petroleum jelly to a more difficult but permanent solution that involves removing the scratch and re-lacquering your monitor. I've also heard the pencil eraser method works for simple scratches, though I haven't tried it. If all this LCD talk has got you in the mood for more LCD maintenance, check out how to clean an LCD monitor, fix your LCD's stuck or dead pixels, and remove LCD image burn-in. Photo by liewcf.

Windows only: Freeware application FreeSnap maximises your active window one edge at a time through a handful of simple keyboard shortcuts. If you're obsessed with making the most of your screen real estate, don't want to maximise windows to take up the entire screen in all directions, and manually resizing windows to the edge of your screen is too much of a hassle, FreeSnap is a perfect solution. Windows-Left/Right/Up/Down will expand your window to the corresponding side of your monitor, while other shortcuts resize windows to specific dimensions or move windows to pre-defined positions on your screen. FreeSnap is freeware, Windows only.

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Blogger Jeff Kelley prefers his windows take up specific areas of his screen, regardless of the monitor he's plugged his MacBook Pro into. His solution? An AppleScript that determines his screen size and arranges his windows appropriately. Whenever he wants to rearrange his desktop to those specifications, he just runs the script. Geek factor aside, the script can be easily modified to maximise your screen real estate to fit your tastes. Windows users have apps like WinSplit Revolution and Sizer, but if you've been looking for similar functionality for your Mac, Jeff's script is a good starting point.

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Techie Jeff Atwood says that while having lots of screen real estate to display more information is great, the downside to multiple or widescreen monitors is that they make you work a little harder to manage windows:

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The Wall Street Journal reports on a recent study that asked whether more screen real estate gave workers the ability to do things faster and better. Workers were given either an 18-inch or 24-inch monitor, and the researchers found that:

People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones. There is an upper limit, however: Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen.

Interesting findings (albeit funded by a monitor manufacturer), but I have to ask our space-savvy readers: How would you use extra screen space to make your desktop more effective, if you had the chance? What can you get done with a bigger monitor than with, say, a multi-desktop app like OS X Leopard's Spaces (or its Windows and Linux equivalents)? Tell us what you think, and share your own story of making the most of what you've got, whether it's laptop-sized or home theatre proportions.

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Fix stuck pixels on your LCD monitor with web site Killdeadpixel. Like previously mentioned JScreenFix, Killdeadpixel unsticks pixels by displaying a quickly changing, high-contrast graphic over the pixel—but Killdeadpixel does it with a neat little draggable graphic, so you can just place the unobtrusive graphic over your stuck pixel and let it do its work. Despite the site's name (which is a misnomer), a stuck pixel is normally stuck showing red, green, blue, or a combination of those colors, and that is what this site can help with. A dead pixel, on the other hand, will display only black. Luckily dead pixels can be fixed with another method.

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Calibrate your monitors for consistent tone and colour with web site Screen Check. The site displays two bars, one white-to-black for adjusting tone and the other covers the red/green/blue spectrum for adjusting colour. Just follow the Screen Check instructions and by the end you should have a reasonably well calibrated monitor. My Dell comes with a very similar built-in calibration tool, but if your monitor doesn't, Screen Check is worth a look.

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Sizing up a new monitor or television these days involves balancing way more than just inch counts—there are widescreen models, display ratios, and other factors that make simple size comparisons difficult. Enter Display Wars, a free web utility that lets you compare display sizes for televisions, monitors, and projection units in simple coloured rectangles and mathematical comparisons. You'll have to know a little bit about the units you're comparing, most importantly the aspect ratio, and it won't tell you much about resolutions and densities, but it's a good way point on the path to a better view.

If you've received a new laptop or LCD monitor recently (or might get one later this week), there's a good chance you received a "glossy" or "anti-reflective" screen with it—and a better chance it'll be pretty smudged by this weekend. Luckily, ZDNet's The Apple Core blog has a few tips on restoring a glossy screen's luster that apply to any system. Along with letting the monitor cool off and choosing a microfiber cloth, you should:

Clean in small sections ... Dividing the display into small areas and then polishing until the entire screen is streak-free will work better than broad swipes with the cloth.

Of course, your standard LCD cleaning rules apply to any screen. How do you keep your new glossy display from looking like an elementary school tech lab system? Offer up some wisdom in the comments. Photo by gepat.