monitor advice please

I just saw the above sale of 21 inch (g500)sony for $145.(aust) 2nd hand

Back when these were hot they were selling for 1600$(aust)

Im on the verge of buying this sucker. monitors is top condition.

I have a 17 inch sony , and always wanted 21 sony

At this price its a steal.

But on the other hand , lcd screens the gower, but still new on the market, may buy the sony 21inch this now and upgrade in a few years to an lcd..

Soo tempting

Some advice would go down well thanks

Large monitors are nice, but you might be able to get a smaller one for cheap or free and run it as a second monitor.

Personally, I have found an LCD screen to be equivalent to the next larger sized CRT (especially after a year or so)... The aged CRT "fuzz" of the character's drives me nuts after awhile (and sometimes the flicker too).

So, if you want a 21" CRT, look at the 17-19" LCD's and see if they would be of any interest to you (and LCD's are so much smaller in footprint). Obviously, if you are a gamer (quick pixel changes) or need accurate color rendering, at this point, nothing can beat a CRT.

Power wise, I am not sure that an LCD is much different than a CRT in power usage (LCD's have back lighting that is on "bright" all the time; CRT's use power, somewhat, in proportion to what is displayed--dark screen is lower power than a bright/white background screen).

To compare, you probably need to bring a kill-a-watt or equivalent for 220VAC meter with you to measure true power under operation.

-Bill

Average LCD power consumption is around 30-40watts.. CRT power consumption is dependant somewhat on tube size If I am not mistaken,ballpark figure is between 80-120watts. CRT's are more expensive to run...
LCD's dont tend to give you a 'headache' looking for longer periods.. thats what ive found anyway.

At one time there was a vast difference in colour rendition CRT-LCD, especially if you use photo editing software. I believe now the gap is much closer & in cases of better branded models, LCD's has surpassed CRT's in PC review mags.

Ive two LCD's & am happy with both

........... price up a 19" LCD and you`ll quickly change your mind !!!!

HEY HEY ITS HENDO said:

........... price up a 19" LCD and you`ll quickly change your mind !!!!

Click to expand...

In the UK anyway 19'' Lcd's start around £105 + vat... I dont know what the pricing of goods are in AUST..

I suppose it's a personal thing but I wouldn't have a CRT if you paid me. Too big and too heavy, and I think my LCD monitors do a better job.

I just threw out a Viewsonic 17 inch CRT in good condition. It was taking up too much space in my apartment.

LCD screens have the same size as a CRT that's one inch (or even 1½ inches) bigger. For example a 17 inch LCD has the same screen size as an 18 or 18½ inch CRT. That's because the CRT size is the size of the tube, but not all of the tube is visible through the case. Just the same way TV's are measured.

Personally I like my 17 inch Samsung LCD monitors. I don't think I would want bigger ones. I do have two in dual monitor mode though.

For whatever it's worth, I've bought 3 Samsungs and gave one to my sister. None of them have a dead pixel. Two were expensive and one was cheap. All three have sharp text. If I look closely, the cheap one has less uniformity of brightness across the screen. If I display an all black screen, like the MS screensaver, in a dimly lit room I can see the cheaper one's black is not as dark as the expensive one, but in normal usage that's irrelevant unless you're a gamer.

By the way, I had a 21 inch Sony trinitron at work and it was as big as a refrigerator. It had a good display, but I prefer my LCDs.

The biggest drawback against LCDs for me is that you can't resize the display without blurry text. That's a big bummer for people with challenging eyesight such as myself. I like the small text for photo editing but for casual browsing, like a much smaller display size such as 800x600 although if monitor is big enough can handle 1024x768.

yup, I 2nd what geepondy is saying. You're stuck with the max resolution the LCD is designed for. That can mean small text, and also when you go to play pc games, you're either running in a super high resolution that causes frame rate to drop, or you go to a lower more reasonable resolution, and then you get the blurry/blocky/interpolated mess.

However some LCD's (quality ones) do a better job at interpolating the lower resolutions and look less blurry/blocky/pixelated than others.

A good quality LCD is the way to go, and technology has come a long way. I'm using a ViewSonic and love the thing. As for size I like 17s or 19s and have never really seen the need to go larger. Both work great and don't seem to large to use 2 feet in front of you (the back edge of my desk.) I guess it's all what you get used to.

Like geepondy and Isaac have said, make sure you can live the native resolution of the monitor. Many new LCDs will do okay with other resolutions, but not as great as the native.

Are there indeed LCD monitors that can do a better job then other's at showing interpolated pixels at other then the native resolution? I don't really see how but if so, where can you find more info on such monitors? I hope to buy a new pc come tax time and right now my plan is to stick with my CRT but I suppose I could still be swayed.

I've set up no-name LCD's and the users had at like 800x600 and it was barely readable.
I've also setup brand new Dell 19"'ers and ran them at 800x600 just to see how it looked and it was surpsingly good. About equal to a cheap lcd running in it's native resolution (some will just have poor image quality, even at native resolution).

I don't think there is a rating/specification for interpolation quality....

I'm still using my 17" 1997 trinitron. I'd love to go to LCD, and if it werent for gaming and not being able to clearly see at lower resolutions... I would..

I will 2nd the Dell LCDs. I have a 20" Widescreen Dell which I normally run at 1280x960 and I also use Microsofts ClearType Tuning program. The Native resolution on this monitor is 1680x1050. The 1280x960 doesn't look blurry or blocky at all to me.

I'd suggest jumping into the trend of WS monitors. The additional screen space is sooo much nicer to work with.

I didn't think much about this until I built up a second system for work. The 21" Samsung WS monitor is soo much nicer to do almost everything on. Tool flyouts and such can stay out for easy access where on the 4:3 CRT, I would have to close them. It's not a big deal until you realize that those few clicks added for each task, that are performed throughout a day can add up to some time.

CRT color accuracy, depending on monitor can still be nicer than a modest LCD so YMMV. My well aged Iiyama still does well but it is losing shadow detail. The LCD is a touch red/magenta but it does so much well, this can be overlooked.

Anyway, my vote is a WS LCD.

Yup.. Lcd's still have drawbacks with regard to optimum screen size.. & can be a problem as geepondy said with folks of eyesight problems.. however in my personal view LCD avantages, outweigh CRT's especially in the size/weight department.

It all boils down to personal criteria & budgets in the end of the day.

Two 21" Philips TFTs running at 1600x 1200 works for me - Highly recommended:

I went through the same stage as you have. Sony made some of the best CRT. LCD is catching up quick. I would not bother with the CRT as it is second hand. It may died on you and without warranty, it is a pain. 21" CRT is too deep and heavy with excessive power consumption. It admits radiation. Try CMV LCD. I have bought about 15 CMV LCDs over the years and I have no problem with them. It is better than most of the brand name LCDs I've seen. I am waiting for a widescreen digital CMV LCD in the order of 23".

I guess newer LCD monitors can interpolate different resolutions okay. I've never seen the need to do that on desktop monitors. Most laptops have such high resolution, I think it's standard to use a non-native resolution.

I sometimes change the DPI setting on my desktop computer to make everything bigger (or smaller). This leaves the resolution at the native setting. The DPI setting is on the Advanced tab of the Settings window. It seems to work for everything including icons etc., except some of the text on a few web pages. I guess that particular text is specified in a different and less desirable way in the html.

I.E. 7 has a zoom button on the bottom bar of the browser window. It goes up to 400%. That's big.

When using LCD monitors with XP you should really try ClearType. The first time you run I.E.7 it show a ClearType button and suggests you click it. I think that's just for the browser window. The general ClearType button is in Display window > Appearances tab > Effects.

The general purpose ClearType works for the majority of monitors that have their color pixels in red-green-blue order. I think Microsoft has a tweak for the less common monitors with blue-green-red pixels.

Jezzyp, I wish you hadn't shown that picture of the Logitech cordless mouse. As it is, I sometimes have flashbacks to the perverse problems I had with mine. It not only drove me insane with it's jumping cursor and crashing event handler software, but it cramped my fingers, and destroyed my NiMH batteries.

Its a microsoft optical mouse that is now 3 years old and I've never had any problems with it - and I use this PC a lot