Flat panel (LCD) monitors

I just got a ViewSonic VX924 for 11,000. Looks great, works great. I primarily use it for gaming though, I’m not sure how it does as a PC monitor.

OK, well that’s not near the price range I was looking at.
What makes it better?

added: Not what you want to hear, but the vx924 is going for 9000 new on yahoo.

lame ass.

if you want a monitor, just research it yourself. I was looking at 20" wide screens. Dell is really cheap ($450 US) but ugly as hell. Other companies make some that are even cheaper and even uglier. 16 something x 1050 resolution.

I’m considering a 20" apple very soon but will probably wait for a 23". I don’t buy ugly shit.

if you had a better attitude i might be more helpful. i usually ignore questions here and say why bother answering them when the person isn’t really asking so nicely. you know your comment alone is enough for me to stop being helpful to you or even most people here in the future. well i usually don’t bother getting into conversations here since the intelligence level is below brilliant so why bother. and people’s manners are enough for me to not want say what I think.

I just got a View Sonic VA 1912 W which is a 19" widescreen for $8900. Perfect for games, movies and everything else.

[quote=“gary”]lame ass.

if you want a monitor, just research it yourself. [/quote]

Great to see our mods being shining examples.

Please tell me about my attitude gary. I’ve met you in real life and you were a pretty nice guy. I’m not sure what’s wrong now. I put the “don’t tell me to buy Apple thing” in there as a joke because I knew exactly what you would say, you are obviously taking it way too personally.

I don’t even know what to say about that.

Hasn’t stopped you so far.

I don’t think it’s necessary to buy an Apple and though I don’t remember the specifics most of those inexpensive lcds were not quite up to the quality I was looking for when I made a purchase.

I did buy an Eizo L568 and am quite happy with it to date. It’s very bright and has very high contrast.

The included calibration software seems good on the pc side but it was touch and go when calibrating with my Mac. I really need to have someone come with a colorimeter and calibrate it but it’s difficult living in Hsinchu.

When I am getting tired I find the brightness to be a bit of a problem - I start to slouch at my desk bringing my eyes closer to the monitor. If you sit too close to a monitor that is this bright you can actually experience some eye strain. But otherwise I stare at this lcd all and night without any problems.

If you are a gamer this likely won’t be the lcd you want to invest in as the response time isn’t as fast as others.

I can’t remember exactly what I paid for but should have been around 16k.

[quote=“Josefus”]
added: Not what you want to hear, but the vx924 is going for 9000 new on yahoo.[/quote]
Yahoo sucks. I haven’t had good experience purchasing from there.

Get the w i d e s c r e e n monitor I talked about before, it’s pretty sweet. Plus im sure your powerbook can handle the resolution.

If price is a concern, you can always go to the second-hand computer store on Bade Rd. (between the old Guanghua Market Bridge (now history) and Jinshan Road on the north side of the street. Don’t know the name, but it’s upstairs up a narrow staircase.

I bought a used 15" flat screen monitor for 3000, and they have some bigger ones there for around 8000.

Kelake

There’s a company called U-Gem who are the distributors for a lot of calibration tools in Taiwan. They have offices in at least Taipei and Taichung, not sure about Hsinchu. I bought a Colorvision Spyder from them in Taichung. Call (04)22323258 ext707 to speak to a guy named Vincent Wang. His English is ok, but not great.

Alternatively, another company called Best Image Co, are a reseller for U-Gem. Call 04 23863899. The rep I dealt with there was Gino Wen. He spoke excellent English.

Either of these could probably help you with finding someone in Hsinchu.

Also, some general LCD advice for anyone interested, based on the research I did a few months ago when I bought one. (Viewsonic VP930b - I’m very happy with it).

If you are in any way serious/entusiastic about photography, and have a high end digital camera or DSLR, you’ll want to look at getting an 8bit screen (16.7million colors). A lot of the cheaper LCD screens are 6 bit (16.2million) which is significantly less than the camera can capture.

You know, with all this talk of cheap stuff and free software. I wonder when people think about the extra time they lose. Mechanics buy good tools cuz they rely on them and it makes working much more fun, and faster. Good software saves you time and frustration. If your time isn’t worth anything… :slight_smile:

I just got the Apple Cinema HD 23". Much more screen space. I’m pretty sure I’ll get the 30" someday or at least another 23".

Imagine yourself with half the screen space you have now. How much more time would you spend and how much productivity would you lose? Imagine yourself with twice the screen space.

Do the Apple monitors work with PCs?

They do DVI. The 30" requires dual-link DVI.

And another thing,

Someday, we’ll realize the importance of technology. The idea of technology, technique, techne is at least as old as Plato; and it’s been discussed for thousands of years by countless philosophers.

Someday, we’ll remember the companies who really cared about technology, this science that cares about the world we create. Sun was like this once, someday it may be again. IBM, some among them. Some in the open source community? yes. Apple? certainly.

Steve Jobs recently said Apple was about the intersection of technology and the humanities. What a great thing to say.

Supporting the organizations that care about this world could be a nice thing to do. Minority Report? Galactica? Terminator? Such a world is definitely a possiblity. It’s not too late yet. Someday it will be.

Why the world doesn’t need us.

Technology is unstoppable. It will affect all economies, all countries, all politics, all society. - Walt Mossberg

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. - Aldous Huxley

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence (the singularity). Shortly after, the human era will be ended. - Vernor Vinge

Bill Joy (former Chief Scientist at Sun) believes that the system of global capitalism, combined with our current rate of progress, gives the human race a 30 to 50 percent chance of going extinct around the time the Singularity happens. “Not only are these estimates not encouraging,” he adds, “but they do not include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction.”

The present moment is the most important and most crucial that has ever confronted mankind. Upon our collective wisdom during the next twenty years depends the question whether mankind shall be plunged into unparalleled disaster, or shall achieve a new level of happiness, security, well-being, and intelligence. I do not know which mankind will choose. There is grave reason for fear, but there is enough possibility of a good solution to make hope not irrational. And it is on this hope that we must act. - Bertrand Russell

How many of you actually use Apple monitors?
Is there some reason that they’re so incredibly expensive?
I could get a big assed 20" Chimei monitor for like 7000nt, or an Apple for 3x as much.
Is there really any reason to?

Cuz they look so cool. :slight_smile:

The screens are by LG. You can get a LG screen in a Dell for a less. The 23" Dell is almost the same price. The 20" is a good amount less.

You’re getting an anondized aluminum case with incredible design. Is that not enough? Same reason people will pay $10,000 US for an italian couch. Style.

I returned my 23" Apple Cinema so I could get a MacBook Pro. I do miss it.

Because of the difficulty in making LCD panels, the LCD itself is only made by a few companies. Most companies which sell LCD monitors buy the LCD from a manufacturer and then add the support electronics and case.

For the LCD itself, the main quality differentiator is the vendor’s ‘dead pixel’ policy. A dead pixel is one pixel that is always stuck either on or off. A few vendors have a ‘zero dead pixel’ policy but that’s rare. The mainstream vendors will typically allow up to 2 or 3 dead pixels. A low end brand won’t be so picky. Since you can often get the seller to demo the exact monitor you will buy in Taiwan, you can at least eyeball whether or not there are obvious dead pixels in the panel.

The rest of it is the quality of the support electronics and packaging. For the electronics the differentiators will be the features it supports (DVI, VGA, etc.), color matching quality, and whether the damn thing will still work a year from now.

It’s not so much the difficulty making the panel (panel is called the closed LCD cell without electronic, backlight, etc… The problem is to do it cost competitive, chosing the right technology (IPS/MVA/others), process and glasssize. A large high volume Generation 6 panel factory costs 3-4 billion UD$

The largest panel manufacturer are Samsung, Lg-Philips, AUO and ChiMei, the rest are much smaller (CPT, Hannstar, Innolux, NEC and Sharp in Japan, SVA and BOE in China)

The dead pixels are not so much a problem today, since they can be fixed during the manufacturing process. Lifetime is normally limited by the backlight (typically around 50k hours), the panel itself doesn’t show much abrasion.