Want some help to choose a monitor

Can you specialists help me choose a monitor please.

It's time to replace my glass tube CRT. I use a really old 17
inch monitor made by DEC back in 1999! To its credit it was
noticeably better than average for its day as it was made for
commerical office use. I have it set to 1152 x 864 at 72 Hz.

A few years ago I looked at getting a flat screen. I got put off
because I saw some 17 inch flat screen monitors had punchy
contrast and brightness but seemed to have a coarse screen
resolution. Then I read how colour rendering on some flat screens
was poorer than on a CRT. Finally I saw power savings from flat
screens were not as great as I thought. So I kept the CRT but now
it's time to move on!

Can you help me narrow down what sort of flat screen to get.

It's for home office use. Not used for games. I don't need
leading edge stuff.

Price is a major factor but I don't want to pay a low price and
get poor value (if you see what I mean).

I'll be replacing the system unit itself soon.

What size and type of screen are currently in the "sweet spot"
where price/performance is particularly good?

I'm in the UK so deals in the US are not available to me.

What sort of must-haves are there in my case?

Petey wrote:

I read how colour rendering on some flat screens was poorer than
on a CRT.

Black is not black. Black looks like when you crank up the
brightness on a CRT to almost 100%. Then again, mine is very
bright even with the backlight at 20%. It is the opposite of one
of my first color monitors, nothing is too dark.

Finally I saw power savings from flat screens were not as great
as I thought.

I think that today's LCDs are very low power.

One neat thing is that text is very crisp (on mine), I can see
individual dots at very high resolution. There is no need to
adjust stuff like location/triangulation/whatever, those settings
are thing of the past, Yea. It is very light compared to my
smaller CRT that it replaced. That helps greatly with it being on
a custom-made monitor stand/hang, it can be repositioned any which
way with very little effort.

You get what you pay for.
That is my advice

Good luck.

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:48:43 +0100, Petey wrote:

Can you specialists help me choose a monitor please.

It's time to replace my glass tube CRT. I use a really old 17
inch monitor made by DEC back in 1999! To its credit it was
noticeably better than average for its day as it was made for
commerical office use. I have it set to 1152 x 864 at 72 Hz.

A few years ago I looked at getting a flat screen. I got put off
because I saw some 17 inch flat screen monitors had punchy
contrast and brightness but seemed to have a coarse screen
resolution. Then I read how colour rendering on some flat screens
was poorer than on a CRT. Finally I saw power savings from flat
screens were not as great as I thought. So I kept the CRT but now
it's time to move on!

Can you help me narrow down what sort of flat screen to get.

It's for home office use. Not used for games. I don't need
leading edge stuff.

Price is a major factor but I don't want to pay a low price and
get poor value (if you see what I mean).

I'll be replacing the system unit itself soon.

What size and type of screen are currently in the "sweet spot"
where price/performance is particularly good?

I'm in the UK so deals in the US are not available to me.

What sort of must-haves are there in my case?

If you're not gaming on it then response times won't be very important
to you. Contrast ratio would be more important. I'd say for value go
for a 19" 4:3 or a bigger widescreen. Philips, Samsung and LG
normally make decent monitors. Cheaper brands like AOC can be fine.

However, I think monitors are very much a personal choice so I would
recommend going to a shop and looking at some before choosing. Failing
that read the reviews in PCPro or similar magazines and see what they
recommend.

TFT monitors need to run at their native resolution so make sure your
graphics card will support the right mode. 60Hz is fine for TFT
monitors. If your graphics card has a DVI output then look for this
on the monitor. Cheaper monitors often don't have a DVI input.

There's an offer on the Samsung T220 22" WS monitor that looks good
value right now. (ebuyer).
--
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posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
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On 15/10/2009 in message
Petey wrote:

What sort of must-haves are there in my case?

Echoing what Mark has aid you must run an LCD monitor at its native
resolution or you will be very disappointed with the results. Again, as
Mark said, I think you should go and look at monitors, PC World is fine
for looking. You need to be sure you can comfortably read text at the
monitor's native resolution/screen size. That depends on your eyes/sight.

Make sure you get one with VGA and DVI input - when you upgrade your PC
you may find it's only got DVI. To me there is a noticeable crispness in
text when I use a DVI connection against VGA, some people see no difference.

Find one with a reasonable range of height adjustment. Pivoting could be a
bonus - I use dual monitors and sometimes pivot one of them so I can work
on A4 documents at full size.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
All things being equal, fat people use more soap

In article , Mark says...

If you're not gaming on it then response times won't be very important
to you. Contrast ratio would be more important.

On this note, be cautious. Many manufacturers have started to quote
"Dynamic Contrast Ratio" as it allows them to quote stupidly high
figures like 30,000:1. It is a con akin to the "1000 Watt" thin 4 inch
speaker which, whilst it can technically handle 1000 watts and thus
claim to, can only handle 1000 watts at a specific frequency and even
then only for a fraction of a second before it blows itself to bits.

--
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.

On 15 Oct 2009 09:52:36 GMT
"Jeff Gaines" wrote:

Echoing what Mark has aid you must run an LCD monitor at its native
resolution or you will be very disappointed with the results. Again,
as Mark said, I think you should go and look at monitors, PC World is
fine for looking. You need to be sure you can comfortably read text
at the monitor's native resolution/screen size. That depends on your
eyes/sight.

Is that relevant? Surely you can change the text size to suit the
display?

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:48:43 +0100
Petey wrote:

Can you help me narrow down what sort of flat screen to get.

It's for home office use. Not used for games. I don't need
leading edge stuff.

What about watching videos? If you don't think you're likely to use your
PC for that, 4:3 is probably worth considering, as someone pointed out,
but I find widescreen is handy for fitting 2 windows side by side. If
you're really into video you'll want at least 1920x1080 resolution.
Otherwise I'd suggest 1680x1050 at 20-22". BTW, if you want to use the
pivoting feature on a large monitor you'll need a remarkably uncluttered
desk!

DVI is essential IMO, and before you commit to a model make sure it
isn't known for image persistence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_persistence like the otherwise
excellent [1] Dell 2500FPW.

[1] Otherwise excellent except for the dreadful quality of the analogue
inputs that is.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

On 15/10/2009 in message 20091015115736.5447cf1a@bluemoon Rob Morley
wrote:

On 15 Oct 2009 09:52:36 GMT
"Jeff Gaines" wrote:

Echoing what Mark has aid you must run an LCD monitor at its native
resolution or you will be very disappointed with the results. Again,
as Mark said, I think you should go and look at monitors, PC World is
fine for looking. You need to be sure you can comfortably read text
at the monitor's native resolution/screen size. That depends on your
eyes/sight.

Is that relevant? Surely you can change the text size to suit the
display?

I had a long discussion with somebody about this once :-)

I tried to make the point that buying a high resolution screen then
increasing the font size gave you the equivalent of a lower resolution
screen (using how much of a spreadsheet was visible) - so why spend more
money to get the higher resolution?

I'm not sure it was much of an argument but to me Windows was designed to
work at a specific font resolution and adjusting it reduces sharpness. I
do spend most of my time looking at text rather than pictures though.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his
life.
(Jeremy Thorpe, 1962)

In message ,
Petey writes
Can you specialists help me choose a monitor please.
Snip

Have a look at the following:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/alist/value-tft
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/alist/high-end-tft

And yes, the advice to check your graphics card will support it's native
resolution is worth heeding. It's also worth using ClearType if your PC
supports it.

PC Pro have done a group review of 22" monitors very recently but
unfortunately their recent website design seems to have lost the group
tests.

--
Surfer!
Email to: ramwater at uk2 dot net

In article , Surfer! says...

And yes, the advice to check your graphics card will support it's native
resolution is worth heeding.

Is there anything built in the last 15 years that doesn't? 1600x1200 was
commonplace on larger CRTs with some doing far higher than that.

Even the highest resolution consumer TFT monitors are quite low in
comparison to old CRT ones.

--
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.