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Another Accident

Well, I had another accident today. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The original plan with the Powerbook was to use my old 17" CRT monitor with it when at my desk, possibly using its monitor spanning facilities to spread the desktop over the built-in screen as well. Unfortunately, the Powerbook's built-in screen turned out to be so much better than the monitor that I never actually used the monitor.

And I got addicted to higher resolutions -- the Powerbook does 1280x864 compared with the 1024x768 that I generally run the monitor at (it'll do that at 85Hz. It'll do 1152x864 at 75Hz, which I find just about tolerable, and 1280x960 at 60Hz, which flickers so much that I can't use at all). All in all it seemed like time for a new LCD monitor.

The best one that money can buy, pretty much, is the 23" widescreen Apple Cinema HD Display. 1920x1200, with superb picture quality and it looks great too. Unfortunately, not only is it over £3,000 but you need an adaptor to use it with a Powerbook, or any computer except a Powermac, which costs another £150. Even I'm not that overpaid. The smaller 22" Apple Cinema Display is 1600x1024, but still costs over £2,000, and still needs an adaptor.

Apple aren't the only people who make displays designed for Apple computers. Formac have a nice line of LCD displays with DVI interfaces (as used in the Powerbook and many PCs) instead of/as well as the Powermac-specific ADC. Their 20" Gallery 2010 display actually has more pixels than the 22" Apple Cinema Display, and is only mind-numbingly expensive.

So I headed off to Tottenham Court Road this afternoon planning to drop in on MicroAnvika and take a look at one, with a view to probably buying it. But I also dropped into the regular weekly computer fair that is split across two venues nearby, and I discovered a dealer selling the Dell UltraSharp 2000FP for about two thirds of what the Formac unit would cost, and with VGA and S-Video inputs as well. It's 20" and 1600x1200, although in truth the image quality is not quite up to the Apple or Formac displays. But the price was a lot more attractive, and one swipe of the credit card later I was faced with the problem of getting it home. As soon as I discovered just how big and heavy the box was, any thought of taking on the train evaporated, and I ended up with a fifty quid taxi ride home.

Here's a picture of the new display next to the Powerbook. Click on it for a bigger version. This web page is open in the top-right corner, but as you can see there's plenty of screen space left. Between both machines, I can open 13 simultaneous 80x24 terminal sessions without any of them overlapping each other or the Dock.

Posted by Mike Scott at January 25, 2003 05:55 PM | TrackBack