Can you tell what it is yet?

Related to my ongoing quest for suitable monitors to use with the beast as a dual display system, my research threw up an interesting program. I've always been very picky about the screens I use, nothing less than a 100Hz refresh rate is generally where I start from. Colours should be bright and vibrant, whites and blacks should be as their name suggests and text should be clear and sharp. It has been known for me to spend an entire morning to get a monitor set up just right. It never ceases to amaze me the rubbish, flickering, smudged, washed out pictures that people will stare at all day. It's infinitely cheaper and quicker to get a good monitor and set it up properly than a replacement pair of eyes.

Anyway, I digress. I've settled upon a 17" LCD as the second monitor and a Iiyama 22" CRT as the main screen. Both these monitors are "A" listed by PCPro (click Reviews-->A List). Further investigation of users comments about this screen were less than favourable about the geometry and colour rendition. I noticed in PCPro's review that they use a program called Displaymate to firstly set up the monitor and then carry out tests to make judgment. There is a free demo available of the program with 6 sample test screens that can be used to correctly set the geometry, brightness, contrast, colour, moire patterns etc. It can also be used on LCDs and Projectors. I suspect the great review from PCPro and the poor comments from users are down to the fact that they didn't spend the time and effort to properly set the thing up. A screen of that cost needs to be properly configured to the ambient light condition of where you place it, the video card driving it and the tasks that you plan to use it for. There's no such thing as a "plug and play" monitor in my opinion.

I'm seriously considering purchasing the full package, and as the boss is into his home cinema with a very expensive LCD projector, I may get him to pay for it as a business expense for the office workstations too. Give the demo a try, your eyes will thank you for it.

Category:

• Computer
• Monitor
• LCD
• CRT