Junk monitors (was: Re: [plug] [OT] User Support)

[Craig Ringer]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 19:57, Cameron Patrick wrote:

> Hmm... I'm wondering how picky you're being when you speak of warping
> and distortion.

Well, I've worked on pro-quality monitors for a while now, so anything
but rock solid and crisp really irritates me. I guess you could say I
have high expectations, yeah. Personally, I think I expect reasonable
quality that won't give me headaches and blurry vision.

> My (albeit limited) experience is that most CRTs these
> days, even relatively cheap ones, have colours at least as nice as older
> CRTs,

Colour - probably true, yeah. Many cheap new ones do have OK colour, but
some are pretty bad. I've noticed at least one occasion where replacing
the flimsy cable the monitor came with with a decent one made a big
difference.

>  and don't look particularly warped.

That's mostly a problem in the really cheap and nasty CRTs like ADi 17"
cheapos. I had the misfortune of using one of those for a while and _oh_
am I sorry.

> and general fuzziness (due to both poor dot
> pitch and poor focus). 

That's one of my key complaints with cheap and nasty CRTs.

>  That being said, I've yet to really use the
> current generation of sub-$200 17" displays

I strongly advise you to keep it that way. Your eyes deserve better. 

> (FWIW - the LCD that I have at home doesn't have such nice
> colours as the CRT sitting next to it, doesn't have such a good viewing
> angle, is slightly blurry when scrolling through a document due to the
> response time, and is pickier about graphics cards than a CRT.)

Interesting. I must admit I've only really looked at the top-end LCDs -
16ms response time, high-contrast & wide angle jobs. Expensive, but all
I'd really consider using. I love the LCD on my laptop, and I even
notice the relative lack of definition on my Philips CRT when I'm
working on them side-by-side. Then again, I also notice the
significantly inferior colour on the LCD. Top of the range CRTs still
seem to beat LCDs in colour quality terms.

Craig Ringer