The last time I bought my own monitor it weighed more than either of my kids (they're sixteen now). The fifteen inch NEC LCD monitor that my father-in-law bought me five or more years ago died this morning. So now I'm shopping...
I think I want wide screen with integrated speakers. I'd like to spend around $150. It doesn't have to be huge -- I never felt terribly constrained by the fifteen incher, and I don't do a lot of multimedia. So I'm not very picky. Still, I want something with a good picture and, of course, reliable.
Any suggestions of what to look for? What to avoid?
NEC is always a good choice. I have a 20" flat panel Accusync that I bought about 5 years ago. Great clarity and colors are good, even without calibration.
My approach is to go to the store carrying a flashdrive with an assortment of my own photos on it. Since I know what the colors look like, how sharp they should look, and where all the subtleties are in them, I can more accurately assess a monitor that way.
i work purely on a 15" MacBook Pro - one of these days I will get an external monitor! Does anyone have any advice on compatible monitors - and is it even possible to buy a monitor that would make an apreciable difference but that wouldn't require a second mortgage?
It's an Asus 21.5" monitor. Your 800 must be really small.
I run the same size home monitor at home and a 24" at work, there's a noticable difference between the two when looking at images. I find i prefer the 22 (21.5 really) that i have at home when voting, though sometimes it'd be nice to have the extra parking space when doing photo and video editing at home.... having a secondary display just isn't the same as having a BIGGER display as my second screen basically becomes an explorer/media player split
Grats on the new hardware, i'm sure that you're seeing a nice change to how you see the digital world :)
i work purely on a 15" MacBook Pro - one of these days I will get an external monitor! Does anyone have any advice on compatible monitors - and is it even possible to buy a monitor that would make an apreciable difference but that wouldn't require a second mortgage?
Quick search led me to this: That's a standard DVI monitor port on the end - any monitor you buy will come with two or three options for connectors now: blue (vga), white (dvi) and some sort of hd connection (some are propriatery and a pain to connect to 3rd party systems as an adapter is needed).
You can get a good monitor for cheap and plug it in, then most laptops will automatically detect the monitor and display to it. the configuration settings required would be to extend the desktop (have it over both monitors and not a mirror), but if you just want bigger, no adjustments should be needed.
**Edit - I do IT support for a living, so if anybody has any questions they would like answered a bit more timely than waiting on a forum thread reply, feel free to PM me and i'll do my best to get back to you as soon as i can, whether it's about stuff like this "will it work" or questions on "how do i get from point X to point Y with these things". :)
