free: exotic monitors (very high res monochrome)

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 09:23:26PM -0400, Sy Ali wrote:
| > They're *great* for that chilly spare room.  =)
| 
| So is my old sun 3/50 (with the extra 8MB ram on a board between the cpu
| and mainboard) with the 19" B/W monitor.  It was a bit noisy but it sure
| helped keep the place warm in the winter. :)

OK, so you know how great that Sun monitor was back in the day
(1152x900) (I seem to remember that you got it much later).  PC
monitors of the time were not even VGA (that was first introduced in
1987).

This monitor is 2040x1664, close to twice the resolution of the Sun's
in each dimension.  And it is grey-scale, not just black and white,
which counts as even more resolution.

About power consumption:  I did some measurements of it and a Viewsonic 
PT775 (17" VGA with a Trinitron or Trinitron-like tube):

7-8w	PT775 asleep
70-71w	PT775 text login screen (mostly black)
73-74w	PT775 text mode, mostly white
84w-86w	PT775 Red Hat Linux 8 desktop, moderate resolution

5w	DP2092 asleep
120w-127w	DP2092 active

That does not seem too bad to me.

| From lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org Wed Apr  4 10:25:50 2007
| Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Yet Another reason to use linux...

|   I really just want working terminal
| windows and the ability to run a web browser (and certainly not
| konqueror).

For browsing, this monitor isn't great but it works: too many sites
use colour.

For a terminal window, this monitor is very hard to beat.
Monochrome/grey-scale works much better than colour because the pixels
can blend -- no dot-triads.  Colour monitors of necessity look grainy
(unless you invent a new technology or you have resolution much beyond
what is available now).

A programmer can never have enough pixels.  My current main monitor is the 
30" Dell LCD with only about 20% more pixels that this grey-scale 
(2560x1600).

If only this had an X driver.  The controller cards are PCI so these
monitors could easily be used as the second (and third) on a system.
I daydreamed of reverse-engineering the binary drivers, but I never
could trick myself into wasting the time.  Using a VGA card would be 
simpler, but my desk is now full of LCDs.

It looks as if these are getting pitched :-(
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