From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: April 11, 2006
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: dell moniutor questions...
>
> Leo,
> --------------
> I have a dell Inspiron 710m laptop with a Intel 82852/82855
> graphics card built in. I am not sure how much memory is on
> the video card (maybe 32 or 64 MB) or the maximum resolution
> (perhaps 1600x1028). The display settings in Windows shows a
> setting of 1280x800 with 32 bit colour. I was thinking of
> picking up the Dell 2405FPW 24" monitor with the maximum
> resolution fo 1920x1200. I do mostly Microsoft office type
> work, some photo editing and watch the occassional DVD. My
> questions are as follows:
>
> 1) What would text and graphics look like with this
> combination? I am afraid that my graphics on the laptop will
> not drive the monitor up to the highest resolution and
> therefore the output display would look terrible.
Not terrible ... but not fantastic either. With LCD monitors
you really want to match the "native" resolution of the monitor,
which is normally it's maximum resolution. That way it's one
pixel of output to one pixel on the screen. Anything less, and
the monitor has to kind of "stretch" ... it has 1920x1200 pixel
regardless of what you feed it, so if you send it less, it will
have to stretch the image to fit.
If you have a chance, go to a local computer store and actually
look at a 1920x1200 LCD monitor being driven at 1600x1028 and see
if you notice or care about the difference.
> 2) The Dell monitor has an S-video input so will it look nice
> if I hook up a DVD player directly to it?
Depends on how far away you sit :-). TV is notoriously low
resolution - 640x480 at best - so if you're sitting up close
you'll notice a similar stretching effect as I mentioned above.
But that's mostly because we sit closer to our monitors than
we do our TVs. If you sit back a "normal" distance ... or even
somewhat less ... LCD monitors display video beautifully - s-video
or otherwise.
Thanks for asking,
Leo
Article 10146
| Category:
Hardware
