So I went out to Cornelius yesterday with a list of specs in my hand and picked up another one that has a resolution that the computer can deliver. I think we're golden until I get home and older son points out that the word BAD is engraved in the backside with a red Marks-A-Lot. Somebody's being funny. I hope. It's a little chilly, and the monitor has been sitting in an unheated warehouse, so I go take a nap while it warms up in its new home. Wake up, plug it in and turn it on, and . . . hey! There's nothing wrong with it after all. It works fine, we just have to adjust the display settings, which takes some doing, but I finally get the computer and the monitor to agree on - get this - 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels. This thing is huge! It didn't look that big in the store, I suppose because I was imagining that all the other screens there were tiny, but here on the desk it's friggin' enormous.
OK, wait a minute, it's not quite perfect. The display is a tad washed out. How can that be? It's an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display, also know as a flat panel display) fer crying out loud, not a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube, the old, heavy, solid glass, TV like devices). I fiddle with the front panel controls, but I am unable to correct it. Well, it's pretty good, and really big. And cheap, don't forget cheap. We'll see what sweetie says.
Sweety takes one look and says yucky poo. Not in so many words, and not quite that quickly, but that's the end result. So I swap out my monitor for hers. Now she's happy and I . . . I have a new toy to play with.
First off I had to fiddle with the settings on my computer. LCD monitors work best when the resolution settings on the computer agree with the native resolution of the screen. LCD monitors can display pictures that are generated using a different resolution, but they come out just the slightest bit fuzzy. The highest resolution I can obtain using my Windows Display Settings Dialog is 1600 x 900. I have always been a little skeptical of this because sweety's computer, which is virtually identical, same make, same model, bought within 6 months of mine, has a half a dozen higher settings available.
Powerstrip to the rescue! Stumbled over this program name when I first ran into the resolution disagreement. It's a wonderful little program that you can download for free and runs on every version of Windows under the sun, and allows you to tweak your video driver seven ways from Sunday. It's also the absolutely worst program in the world, having a bunch of screens of totally useless information and no clear method to get where I want to go. I have to click at least a dozen times to get it to do what I want. You just have to ignore the parts you don't understand, which is like 99% of it. CNET comments on it here.
So now I have a really big, slightly faded monitor on my desk. I don't know whether I'll be able to fix the fade, I suspect not, but we shall see. Meanwhile this thing has a trick support. It has a vertical post that it slides on so you can raise and lower it. This doesn't have much appeal, but it also can be swiveled (pivoted) so you could compensate if your desk was tilted sideways at say 30 degrees. Funny thing is though it won't go all the way to 90, which would be really sweet. But since it is a simple mechanical connection, no wires or electricity involved, I might be able to correct this with a file. Stay tuned.
I'm still running Windows XP and probably will continue to do so until hell freezes over, or they start giving away computers in Cracker Jack boxes, which I hear is going to start happening next week. In any case, these helpful instructions are for Windows XP. If you are running a different version of Windows, or god forbid, some other operating system entirely, you're on your own.To get to the Windows Display Settings Dialog, point at the background on your Windows Desktop and right click. This little menu should pop up.
Screen resolution (pixel dimensions) can be set with slider at the lower left.
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