New Monitor??

>>Hi all,
>>Current monitor, old fuzzy 13" CRT,
>>needs upgrading, who knows more...
>>
>>Goto Architecture, they'll understand :)
>>
>>17" CRT x 17" deep ($150) but covers
>>2 square feet of my desk. What's 2
>>square feet of desk worth? (including
>>the roof, floor, replacement value etc.)
>>
>>17" LCD Flat, Nil Area, no over and under
>>head cost, ($300).
>>
>>Does anyone find LCD's inferior to CRT's
>>or CRT's superior to LCD's?
>>
>>I need to be able to read equations with
>>exponents.
>
>
> I bought a Planar 19" LCD about 2 years ago, will never go back to CRT's.
> I bought 2 shelf brackets and a 2' piece of melamine at Lowes for about 10
> bux and mounted my LCD about 8" above my desk on the wall.
> That way I can scoot my keyboard to the rear of the desk when I need to use
> my desk for other stuff, plus, it puts my monitor up at a comfortable > height.
> Colors a different with an LCD.
>
>

I use a 19" LCD monitor at work. I have a 17" CRT at home - bought it while I was still in grad school and didn't have the bread for an LCD.

Aside from saving desk space, I don't see what's so great about an LCD monitor. The CRT works just fine for me.

Went 19" LCD 2 years ago...love it. Brighter...sharper. Less desk space.

Worth it!

I don't like the look. Some of the Dell laptops look great.

Remember that the LCDs have a physically fixed ("native") pixel count. Anything else should look quite nasty except maybe exactly half if it's dense enough to begin with. Point being if you want to run at 1280, don't spring for a 1600 capable LCD.

Some people really like the crispness of the LCD pixels. The analog pixels aren't perfectly bounded. The electron beam bleeds a little. This gives a nice gaussian blur which some find increases legibility of small text.

When you go to the store, make sure you get to test a display on YOUR data. Or at least something real. The little advertising movies they show don't display tiny black text on a white background in the upper right corner, they show all sorts of soft fuzzy blue crap and movie clips... all things that are useless for "how will this be for desktop use?" I usually just open up Notepad and type a line of text and move that about the screen. Suppose the "moving about" phase may be more important on analogs which have more reason for edge degredation.

There's also the analog vs. digital input to the LCD question. My understanding is "digital [DVI?], duh." But I can't comment on actual difference.

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

I second Don's experience. I also bought a 19-inch Planar and would never go back to CRT.

I've got a 20" ViewSonic LCD. Gotta go LCD. Many different brands and qualities available at different costs. Mine was about $600.00 with a max resolution of 1600X1200. But IMO the most important factor is that I also have a Sanus swivel wall mount (V3s double arm) that allows me to stow the sucker away from my face and under a shelf for when I do hand sketching or any desktop task etc...

Don:

I think you have to add a TV card to your computer, although some of the newer video cards have a TV tuner built-in.

I _think_ Bob's right.

Ken:

For cad work I wouldn't go smaller than 19-inch. A larger monitor means less zooming and panning. I'm running at the native resolution of

BTW, my 19-inch LCD has a bigger image than my old 19-inch CRT.

No worries.

It's been a while since I've used anything smaller than a 19.

Obvious factors - regular working distance, pixel count used, eyes (age) of user. I use a 19 at work and rather like it. The size is a little luxurious in a way and a 17" would probably be adequate. But think real hard about it. $300 for something you are going to sit with hour after hour day in and day out is not worth living with some shortcoming. To me, 15" is getting into toy range; adequate for configuring your plot server if you need to.

You should be able to find a 19" that'll do more pixels than any 17".

I'd call that minimum and agitate for 1600. But older eyes seem to tend to back down to 1280. I don't know your eyes.

I'm not sure %area is a useful metric.

See above re: live with.

At times, especially if a little too close, at 21" can actually start to be something you can't look "at" but have to look "around". You can find yourself having to turn your head to look for the "File" menu. I love my

Most, if not all, LCDs are truer-to-size.

Notan

It's a video card issue... mostly

I'd recommend against buying "famous brand"'s hardware. Unless you are one of those people who just can't tell the difference.

And here's the product Mfr and Model:

SCEPTRE X9G-KOMODOII 19-IN EDTV LCD Display with Speakers

Famous Brand = Sceptre

LCD is great because it doesn't generate heat or noise. It's one reason I'm laptop.

Thanks Gruhn (et al) I'm sold on a minimum 17" LCD.

My eye's are fine, but everyone (I read) quotes max resolution at 1280x1024. My application is primarily reading equations, so it's less acute than one an architect might need. I have written numerous simulators in qBasic, and the screen needs to be compatible with that as well (or I switch back as necessary to CRT), off hand do you anticipate any problems using the graphics generated by the screen functions in qBasic with the LCD monitors (1280x1024)?

It's visual real estate, like a window, should two lot's cost 4x 1 lot.

Agreed. I think in terms of practical vs cost, somewhat like procuring 100,000 units for a company is my mentality. Thanks again Ken S. Tucker

Ah, QB is apparently a DOS product. Makes life a bit "trickier" but my sketchy understanding of the situation makes it look like you should be able to get useful output. The worst that might happen is you don't run the monitor at native resolution for the graphics and get pixel doubling. That is, instead of

you see

Because it tries to display five pixels worth of data across a six pixel wide screen.

Does the local zoning allow you to build four shotgun shacks on four single lots but a 70 unit luxury condo tower on one lot the size of four smaller?

I commented earlier on my 19" re: luxury. I measure now, it is just over 18" viewable.

Are you pretty much using DOS and not one of these fancy GUI things? If so, smaller should be not as bad.

- g