Adjusting to life with a really big display

On MacInTouch yesterday, Rajiv Dewan wrote in with this sob story about how awful life is with his new 30-inch Cinema Display. It seems most of his time is spent in the lower right corner of the monitor, while his most frequently used menus are about 29 inches away in the upper left corner. I must admit he has a point. It is quite annoying to have to constantly be shuffling across the whole screen.

I have three words for Rajiv: Don't do that!

I have a pair of 20-inch displays and instead of constantly reaching, I use one of several utilities which let me put my menus wherever the heck I want them. There are several applications that resolve this problem by enabling tear-off or detachable menus. The one I used in Panther is called OCSmart Hacks and it works as advertised. In Tiger, I recommend DejaMenu [pictured], which brings all your menu commands to wherever your mouse is, activated by a hotkey combination you specify in the preferences. Both of these apps offer a few other niceties as well, making them well worth their shareware price tags.