The trade-off in productivity between using a high-resolution 80 column screen versus the low-resolution 106 and 128 column screens

This study involved two experiments which attempted to measure the productivity level of working on a spreadsheet which can display more than 80 characters. The gain in the number of rows and columns in other display modes was achieved by shrinking the size of the display characters which resulted in a decrease in display resolution. The result from the first experiment did not show any significant difference between presentation modes. The second experiment however, indicated that there was a significant difference in performance time and accuracy between the presentation modes. Results obtained also revealed that differences also occurred between working on-screen and working off-screen. It appears that the Lotus default mode yielded the best productivity in this experiment, both in the on-screen and off-screen task. Preference wise, the majority of subjects preferred having good resolution to having more information on display at one time.