This 19” Monitor Will Fit Where You Think Only a 17” or Less Would.
Written: Mar 17 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Short depth. Not much more expensive than a regular sized 19” monitor.
Cons: Text could be sharper.
The Bottom Line: This is currently the best short depth 19” monitor available.
|
|
|
| grimjack2's Full Review: ViewSonic GS790 (Beige) (Beige) 19 inch CRT Monito... |
This monitor was not my original choice, but I’m glad I got it. Where I work, a co-worker needed a new monitor to replace his tiny 6 year old, 15” screen monitor that was just about to go out. Since he deals with large spreadsheets all day, I wanted to get him at least a 19” replacement. However, the area his monitor needs to go is so small that it might not have been possible to fit an average 19” there. At home, I own a four year old Viewsonic PS790 which is specifically marketed as being a shallow depth monitor. I thought this would be a perfect replacement since it should just fit, but unfortunately that monitor is no longer available.
Instead, the closet short depth replacement is the Viewsonic GS790. The ‘G’ apparently stands for ‘Graphic’, which is what this line is aimed at.
The monitor has a viewable area of 18.0 diagonal inches exactly. This is just about on par for any other 19” monitor. What makes this superior to other 19” monitors though is the fact that it only has a depth of 16.2 inches. This is just slightly more than the depth of the 15” that I’m replacing. At 42 lbs, it isn’t light, but it does seem a little heavier than other 19” monitors. Although this is probably not by much.
Its dot pitch is .26, which seems a fraction higher than some of the other comparable monitors. The 19” Sony’s only have a .25 dot pitch, and some other brands are down to .24. This used to be a bigger deal, but as people get larger monitors, the dot pitch increased, and soon people weren’t so excited about going from .26 to .25 anymore.
The GS790 tube is based on an Invar Shadow Mask as opposed to the more expensive and more respected Aperture Grills. It also has an anti-reflect and anti-glare screen. It still is not completely non-light reflective, but it is a far cry from the practically mirrored surface of the monitor we replaced.
The monitor has a preset mode of 1600x1200 @ 75 Hz, but the manual recommends 1024x768 or 1280x1024 @75 Hz. It is actually rated for 1280x1024 @ 88hz works, and may be the highest I think I’ve seen for a 19”. The manual also warns that the highest refresh rate possible is 178 Hz for 640x480 non-interlaced. At 1600x1200 the highest refresh rate is 89 Hz. These are very high by today’s standards, and higher than most people would ever need.
Some other features the monitor has is auto degauss, and a power off in five seconds if no signal is being sent. It also has horizontal and vertical moiré adjustment. There are the standard on-view Viewsonic controls. Some people love them and some people hate them. I’ve never had any problems at all with them. But I can see why adjusting the controls is not very intuitive to someone who doesn’t even know that adjustments can be made. One thing I did notice missing was that there are no number references for the brightness or the contrast settings. If I want to be precise when I play with a value up & down, I’m not sure how to do it without making a little mark on the screen, or put a sticky note on the screen to mark movement. Older Viewsonics, like mine, have this so why does this model only have a large colored bar?
I like the fact that you can pull up an information display of what resolutions and refresh rates your monitor is at any time. When playing some games you don’t realize what resolution you have just been thrown into. On another machine, sometimes after we crash we are thrown into safe mode, and when we restart using our regular graphic drivers, the refresh rate inexplicably drops to the card’s default resolution of 60hz. With this monitor it would be easier to check if something is amiss instead of going into the control panel.
When doing research on the monitor, I read in a magazine that it had great graphics, but only okay text. I almost didn’t buy it because of this, but I’m glad I didn’t listen. That evaluation is somewhat accurate, but not enough to care about. The graphics do look great with the colors quite bright, but the small text looks a little fuzzy. I’m talking about fonts smaller than size 8 Arial on an Excel spreadsheet at 1280x1024 resolution. This is not a size of text that people tend to try to read or care about.
Included with the monitor is a power cord, monitor stand, quick start guide, and a CD with install wizard. The quick start guide is unintentionally funny. On a flap on the inside cover (it doesn’t even take up a full page) are three pictures. The first one shows how to plug in the monitor and the computer. The next one shows how to plug the monitor into the computer case. The third shows where the power buttons are on the monitor and the computer. The computer in the picture looks like a generic tower case. I hope no one who owns a desktop case sees this and gets worried that their machine won’t connect correctly. I feel pretty comfortable in assuming that even the completely computer illiterate can handle plugging the monitor’s two cables into the right locations.
The rest of the quickguide consists of one page talking about what’s on the CD-Rom and how to access the CD-Rom documentation. Then it repeats in nine other languages. The twenty page .PDF file on the CD-Rom is only somewhat helpful. Most of the pages are wasted information, and only about four pages has anything to do with the operation of the monitor.
Also included on the CD-Rom is Colorific software and True Internet Color. True Internet Color is supposed to let you see more accurate colors on web pages. With the True Internet panel installed, if you visit a web page that was created with True Internet Color, an icon will appear on the taskbar letting you know if the page is or isn’t in True Color. Somehow I doubt that it will catch on. I haven’t seen a single page using it yet.
The Colorific software comes with a blue color slide found in the CD sleeve. This will apparently let you adjust the colors to match an optimum setting. I tried to use it, but I quickly realized looking at the slide that the light in the room, the image on the screen, and the graphic card settings made enough of a variance in the color that it wouldn’t be possible to make a perfect setting.
Our GS790 was purchased online from Microwarehouse for $319.95. I would have liked to have purchased this at one of my local computer stores, but no one carried it, and actually neither CompUSA or Office Depot had any short depth monitors for sale. The monitor comes with a three year warranty, and in my experience Viewsonics can last for much longer than that. Although this monitor will work with Macintosh computers, any Mac prior to a G3 needs an additional adapter that can be ordered from Viewsonic
This monitor is a fine choice, even if it didn’t have the short depth. If it costs a few dollars more than other 19” monitors, the short depth makes it worth the expense.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 350
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
grimjack2
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: San Rafael, CA, Marin County
Reviews written: 181
Trusted by: 124 members
About Me:
Film is my favorite art form. I live a life of constant amelioration.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.