LCD monitors

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 10:28:49AM -0400, William O'Higgins Witteman wrote:
> The monitor finally arrived, and it has a VGA input, so my video card
> just plugged right in with no need for an adapter, which is nice.  My
> dpkg-reconfigure command worked fine, but now I have a couple of
> questions.
> 
> Is there an advantage to the digital input (should I get a DVI video
> card)?

Using VGA means going from digital (in the video card) to analog (on the
cable) back to digital (in the LCD panel).  Using DVI means digital all
the way, which means much less change of interference and distorsions.
And the screen doesn't have to worry about locking on to the signal to
get alignment and such.  Most of the time the analog signal will be
perfectly fine and everything will work, but if there is any
interference, the DVI will deal with it much better and should always
give a perfectly stable display.

> It is set at its native resolution right now - do I need to do anything
> else - is sub-pixel hinting a good thing?

Subpixel hinting can help fonts look better since the RGB pixels on the
LCD are not going to blend quite as much as they do on a CRT, and having
software know about that can help.

> For reference, the monitor I got is this one:
> http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=320-5205
> 
> It's a bit huge, and almost too bright to look at, but it's seems very
> nice :-)

Make sure you configure X to run at 1680x1050, since that is the only
proper resolution for that screen.  Anything else with be a bit blurred.

I look forward to getting my 24" 1920x1200 screen in a few weeks.  Time
to toss the pile of old 21" CRTs (none of which work properly anymore).

--
Len Sorensen
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