For your viewing pleasure
Mar 02 '01
The Bottom Line Take all of the factors into consideration when buying the most important part of your system
The monitor that you will buy for your computer will probably be the one part of your computer that you will take with you for most of your computers. The monitor is the thing that let’s you enter your computer, and without it, your wouldn’t be able to understand what was happening, unless of course you can read the computers beeps. There are all different types of monitors and all of the types can be a bit overwhelming. I am here to sort through all of the sales pitches and bring you the right monitor for you.
The first thing is to realize how much money you want to spend. Monitors aren’t cheap, and unlike the rest of the computer accessories, the price isn’t falling very rapidly, in fact they don’t seem to be falling at all! If you have a lot of money to spend, you can spring and get a larger monitor or a flat panel. If you are on a budget, then you may not want to get a larger size monitor and instead get a quality smaller one.
The first thing, even more basic than the size of the monitor, is the type. There are two main types of monitors (the rest are really expensive and don’t waste your money), Cathode Ray Tubes and Flat Panel monitors. The first one is the most popular and better kind. The size of the screen is actually two inches more that the view size (a 19” monitor has a view size of 17”), but is much cheaper. A CRT is a TV like thing, is deep. A LCD display is about one inch think and the size is the view size, so a 15” monitor would be 15 inches of view space. I would not recommend LCD’s, so I’m not going to talk about them in this article.
The size of the monitor is the thing that separates the men from the boys. Most crappy computers come with a 15-inch monitor, CRAP! I would recommend at least a seventeen-inch monitor, but I’d spring for higher if I could. Another thing is the curve of the monitor. Most new monitors are absolutely flat which decreases the amount of USEABLE space. I would go for the monitor with the least curvature, but it really isn’t all that important, my current Viewsonic PS790 curves a lot but is great.
Another thing to worry about is the maximum resolution. This is the resolution that can be viewed at most, they can support everything beneath that. Most modern monitors provide just fine resolutions. Just to be safe, I’d make sure the monitor goes up to at least 1024 by 768 pixels for monitors above seventeen inches. Something that goes along with resolution is refresh rate. This is rate that the CRT shoots out a new image. If it’s too little then the screen will have a really crappy resolution (or at least it will LOOK like that)
The last thing to look into when buying a monitor is the dot pitch. This is a complicated thing to describe and understand, I don’t’ fully understand it myself! But, anyway, it should be above .27 millimeters. To basically describe it, it’s the space between the pixels on the screen.
Take all of this into consideration when buying a monitor because it’s probably the most expensive part of the computer. It’s also the part that you will use the most. Happy monitor shopping!
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