Displays

Displays and Monitors

  If you spend a lot of time with your system, and especially if you use a any type of presentation or graphics editing software, you

 already know how important the display is to your productivity (and eyes!).  A good display is, to us, one of the most important system investment you can make - especially for those of you, who like this writer, have reached the age where doing close detail work or reading small print now requires using the dreaded reading glasses! 

But no matter your age or visual acuity, as always, we believe that you should choose the display the most closely fits your personal work requirements - and the "needs" of your pocketbook as well.   In general, you'll first have to decide between the four basic display types:

• Standard CRT (cathode ray tube) - oldest and cheapest $120-$700, if you want a big screen, you'd better have lots of room on your desktop
• Flat Screen CRT - better definition, a bit higher in price - $300-$1,000
• Analog LCD (liquid crystal display) - can be very good, more room on your desktop, bigger dollars but coming down rapidly in price - $200 to $3,000.
• Digital LCD  - best quality, (no digital to analog conversion required) biggest price - $2500-$15,000.

Besides those pocketbook constraints that are always present for any home-based business owner, you need to consider some very basic technical criteria as well.  The basic areas of display "differentiation" are:

• Physical Interface - the two most prominent are VGA (Video Graphics Array, analog) connectors (those 15 pin cables you've been plugging into your PC from your display for a very long time) and DVI (Digital Video Interface) for newer digital displays.  The beauty of digital, is, as noted above, that there is no digital to analog conversion, so less signal degradation occurs.  That means a better and more accurate display.
• Display Area - usually measured diagonally (like TVs) so don't expect that you're actually getting 17" across. Additionally, another term, the aspect ratio, is used to define the size of a screen.  The aspect ratio is the width to the height of a screen.  Most standard CRTs have an aspect ratio of 4 to 3, some newer LCDs are 16 to 9.

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• Resolution - Simple put, resolution is the number of dots or pixels of color that are contained on the display in rows (horizontal axis) and columns (vertical axis) for example - 1280x1024.  Of course, the bigger the number, the better the "resolution" or the image on the display.
• Dot Pitch  - is the space between the dots or pixels.  The less space between, the better the resolution (above). 
• Color Depth - is the number of bits that can be used to "describe" a pixel or dot.  In monochrome only 1 bit is used (2 colors), in 24 bit depth 8 bits are used to describe each of the 3 primary colors producing 10,000,000 colors.  Newer displays support 32 bit depth and the result is 16,777,216 colors that the human eye can discern.  Remember here, that it isn't just what your display can support, your graphics card must be able to support the same bit depth as your display if you want to get the most out of your display investment.

• Refresh Rate - is the number of times per second that the screen image is redrawn.  If the specs on the display you're looking at has a refresh rate of 56Hz, that means that the image is redrawn 56 times per second.  The best displays have very high refresh rates.  This ensures that there won't be a lot of flickering and you won't go blind from staring at a screen that looks like a flashing neon sign.
• Power Requirements - an old style CRT can really use a lot of "juice" over 100 watts for some displays.  LCDs by contrast, often require under 40 watts.  So, if you've decided on a CRT - or an LCD - make sure that it includes power management tools that will suspend the display when you aren't using your system.

Some other "soft" things to think about before you buy that display:

• Display Purpose - Just doing email?  Some basic word processing?  You probably don't need the biggest, best LCD - a flat panel CRT or a small, analog LCD will probably be just fine.
• Connectivity and Configuration - not just the cabling, analog and digital as outlined above.  You can also get USB displays as well as displays that serve as USB hubs, include speakers, are TV tuners and more.
• Price - As always, what are you willing to pay?  As always you'll get exactly what you pay for - more quality and capabilities - more $$'s.
• System and video/graphics card - Finally, if your system and video/graphics card are "low end", having a high quality display is rather incongruous.  Make sure that when you purchase your display that the rest of your video system has the capabilities that will allow you to realize the capabilities that you've paid for.

So, ready to take a look at what is out there?  We've tried to hit on the majority of displays and their manufacturers (and trust us, there's a TON of them!.  In fact, the number was so large, that we had to build a separate document with all the choices on them (and relevant information).  You can find this document at:  Displays.

Additionally, we've chosen our favorite display from every manufacturer.  Just look for the ¿ symbol!

Displays and Monitors Review

Displays*

(Rankings - best, 5 symbols, worst, 1 symbol)