Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 17 January 2003
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
From: Brian
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: LCDs

My 17" LCD has given excellent service for a couple of
years now, and is only truly sharp at 1280x1024.

I like it because it looks good, is flicker-free, and
leaves heaps of room for me to cllutter my desk with other
junk.

Forbes are predicting a boom in flat screens
http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/23/0823tentech.html
and have predicted the virtual demise of CRT manufacture
within three years




From: Max Nilson
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: LCD monitor experiance

I have reciently replaced my dieing 20" HP900 with a shiny
new Hyundai 17" ImageQuest L70A, and I couldn't be happier.
Only 1" less diagonal size and it provides a very crisp,
maximum 1280x1024 resolution with a fast pixel responce,
very bright and good view angles.

It works for CounterStrike with out a glitch, and no motion
blur that I can see. Plus its is vastly lighter and easier
to take to LANs than a CRT. Not to mention the cool factor 8-)

I used toconnect to it using the analogue VGA port, and the
monitor does extremely good scaling no matter what the
resolution, but I have now switched over to a DVI-D digital
connection that provides superior pixel crispness at the
cost of either poor scaling on non 1280x0124 multiple, or
having the image with a back border of unused pixels.

Do note that getting your hands on a DVI-D cable can be a
hassle as their only one supplier in NZ.

I have also tested Windows XP ClearType capabilities
(Microsoft's sub pixel font rendering technology) and it is
truely gorgeous, so I'll be moving to using XP full time for
just that reason as soon as I find time to reinstall
everything I use on a daily basis.




From: Toenail
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: LCDs

I agree that a 15" LCD's 1024x768 resolution is very
limited. Only suited for general use. The price gap
between a 15" LCD and that of a 17" LCD is closing. You
can find a relatively high quality 17" model for NZ$1400.

I moved from a 19" Diamondtron NF CRT to a Samsung 172T
17" LCD. Apparent is the no need for warm up time of
CRT's, perfect geometry, less glare, crisper text, and
very bright. Not to mention health reasons (Much lower
emission). Downside is that the colours are not as
accurate (If you need to do colour matching in photoshop
for a real print out).

Maybe not with this model(research tells me this is one of
the best quality LCD available on the market, even
compared to the Apple Cinema Displays.
(a review available here)
but most LCDs out there still have trouble with low
intensities of grey, which will often appear to be
just black, dispite their high spec'ed contrast ratio.

As for gaming, I run all my games at its native resolution
1280x1024 with very acceptible frame rates (GF4 Ti, Athlon
XP 2100+), so scaling problem of an LCD is not a problem.
Ghosting is non-existent (Medal of Honor, UT2K3, GTA3,
Mafia) for its rated <25ms response time. Becareful about
relying entirely on the maufacturers rated respose time.
As I've seen a few models from Samsung that ghost/trails
in games even though their response time is rated at the
same 25ms. Same goes for Viewsonic, I found one of their
17" LCD's which is rated at 35ms ghost less then their
more expensive MVA panels which are rated at 25ms.

There is a 16ms model from Hitachi (CML174SXW) which
claims a record breaking 16ms response time. Reviewed on
Toms hardware which is good for gaming, but image quality
is not upto pair with say the Samsung 172T.

Yes, so I think LCD's are heading the right direction, and
will eventually replace CRTs(Cost is the major factor for
most people, while accurate colour reproduction is the
factor for image professionals). Actually LCDs have been
very common in other countries for a long time, such as
Hong Kong. I've noticed recently, developement in
advancing CRT technology have stopped, there are no more
new updates to Sony's Trinitron FD and Mit's DiamondTron
NF line of tubes (they power most of the high end CRT
displays), which have been around for quite a long time.
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