New monitor
The lovely 17″ Samsung 171T monitor, whose crisp and colorful 1280:1024 image I’ve been enjoying since 2002 after my last 19″ CRT monster died, refused to turn on the other day. I couldn’t even get the menu or the “no signal” to come up. There were no warning signs of its impending demise, other than the fact that LCD monitors don’t generally last longer than three or four years.
So I had to get a new monitor. I went down to Ba-de Road and found a gargantuan 22″ Viewsonic VX2235 LCD to replace the fallen Samsung. At half the price of the 171T, it was relatively cheap and looked good at the store.
When I got it home, however, I found that with the increased real estate came some other viewing issues, such as some areas being darker than others. A smudge-like area graced the left side. When light levels at the top were ok, the bottom was too light, and when the bottom was just right, the top was too dark. Also, it just felt unnaturally large. It barely fit under my computer shelf desk.
The size I could get used to, but the other issues were unforgivable. I took it back and decided to go back to Samsung with the cheaper 20″ 205BW model, which has the same resolution, 1680 by 1050, as the Viewsonic. The brightness seems more even, the color better, and though the top/bottom differences are still there, they don’t bother me as much. There’s some light bleed at the top that is only visible when watching 16:9 movies with solid black bars on the top and bottom. I have to admit I’m a little concerned about that.
The new Sammy’s not huge. In fact it’s the same height as my old Samsung; it’s just wider by half. And, not insignificantly, a couple thousand NT$ cheaper than the Viewsonic, which is good because I also had to get a new ATi Radeon graphics card that could deal with the higher resolution after my nVidia 5700 literally wet itself at the prospect of displaying so many pixels at one time.
I’m tired of hauling monitors back and forth from Ba-de Road to Xindian in any case. Hopefully this one will do just fine.
