Screen resolution for SL

85.3 lbs actually

I could've had a FREE 21" CRT Monitor... I just couldnt lift it.

Yep! No problems with the monitor or resolutions or dead pixles.


Actually, the 1st thing to get replaced will be my TV.

20" Magnavox from 1990. Damn good set, but it's showing its age.

Hmm, I run in windowed mode 1689x1013 because I run dual monitors in dual view with 22" Widescreen LCD and a 19" standard LCD on the side for forums, email etc. Whenever I click on the right monitor for some reason SL in non-window mode closes out of view.

Firstly I got rid of a lot of headaches from long term computer use on CRT's by switching to LCD, there's something to not having your head under a meter from one of the most powerful magnetic field generators in the house. And also LCD does waver like CRT does, pixels don't wobble on LCD's, whether it's bad enough to be noticed or not on a CRT.
I can wipe my LCD with windex too, but a damp cloth does fine.
Also LCD's use way less power than CRT's. My UPS won't run a14" CRT period, yet can handle my 22" for enough time to shut the computer down safely in a power failure.
Dead pixels were common on the cheapies and when LCD's first came on the market 5 years ago.

Sorry SKippy, Dead Pixels are still around even for expensive models.

www.newegg.com and read the customer reviews.

Not "as" common, but it still exists. LoL! Still even seeing them as in "today", literally.

Besides, I can fix a CRT myself, spend less money on one for the same size LCD.

When LCDs become as dirt cheap, maybe I'll bother with one.

I'm still envious of their size/weight.

Actually, I can.

As we've discussed on other topics, it's not all about the upfront cost. Ongoing costs need to be considered as well. I'll explain.

According to the US Department of Energy, an average CRT monitor consumes about 150 watts of electricity when it's awake, and about 30 watts when it's asleep*. (You can find the exact specs for yours on the label on the back near the power cord, but for now, all we can go with is the average.) According the LG website, their L227WTG 22" LCD uses just 45 watts when it's awake, and only 1 watt when it's asleep. That means your CRT is costing you anywhere from 3 to 30 times as much for electricity than an LCD would, depending on how much you use it, and on whether or not you leave it on when not in use.

Well, how much is that? Electricity is cheap, right? Well, not really.

According, again, the Department of Energy, the average cost of electricity in the US is 10.31 cents per kilowatt hour**. So every hour you use an average CRT in an average home, you're spending about a penny and a half, and every hour your CRT sleeps costs you about a third of a penny. That 22" LG LCD, on the other hand, costs only half a penny for every hour awake, and a tenth of a penny for every hour asleep.

If you use your monitor for 8 hours every day (240 hours per month), your electric bill for it would be around $3.70 for the month. So every year, you're spending around $45 for active use. Compare that with the roughly $13 it would cost to run that LCD for the same amount of time, and you're spending $32 too much each year.

People tend to replace monitors about every five to seven years or so. Let's call it six. By today's numbers, you'll spend about $190 more in six years running that CRT than you would an LCD.

And that's before you even get into cost for sleep time. Do you leave your monitor on during the day while you're not using it? Most people do. But let's assume you're more conscientious than most people, and you only leave yours on for half the day. Subtract the eight hours of active use, and we're left with another four hours of sleep time. That's about $4.50 for a year with the CRT vs. all of 15 cents for a year with the LCD. In six years, you'll spend about $26 more on the sleeping CRT than you would on a sleeping LCD.

Let's see, you paid $128 for that CRT, right? That LG costs $339, a difference of $211. What did we just come up with for power savings over the life of the LCD? About $216. So the total cost comes out about the same in the end. You do cause a whole lot less coal to be burned when you use the LCD, though, which is important.



*Average CRT energy usage stats from http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/appliances/index.cfm/mytopic=10040

**Average electricity cost stats from http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html




Good LCD's allow for viewing at any angle these days too. That LG, for example, boasts 170/170 degree viewing. The "sweet spot" range is probably a bit less than that, but it should still be good at just about any angle of normal usage. How often do you really need to sit way off to the side, and view your monitor from 170 degrees anyway?

As for the Windex thing, again, most modern LCD's do allow for that. The days of delicate chemically coated flat screens are long gone. I use Windex on my flat panels all the time.





WHAT?!!! Where are you getting your information, Tod? One of the biggest selling points on LCD's, since the day they were invented, was that they use less power than CRT's. That's elementary physics. You'd have to add an awful lot of Rube Goldberg bells and whistles to an LCD to make it consume as much power as a no-frills CRT.


Dead pixels, no. But they can suffer from gaussing problems, which LCD's can't. So you have to be relatively careful around CRT's with things speaker placement, or anything else that creates a magnetic field. Also, since they rely on moving parts, they do experience mechanical wear and tear over time, which can degrade performance.

In any case, as Skippy pointed out, dead pixels are very rare these days. Many higher quality brands offer zero-dead-pixel guarantees these days.



There you have something. The flexibility in resolution remains one of the last selling points on CRT's over LCD's (which is kind of the point of this thread).

While we're on the subject of legitimate CRT advantages, the other significant one is contrast. With a CRT, each pixel can get as black as when the monitor is off, regardless of how bright or dim its neighboring pixels are. The contrast ratio, therefore, can be described as nearly infinite. But with LCD's that's just not possible. There's always some degree of light bleed from pixel to pixel, and since there's a backlight, true black cannot really be achieved. They do get closer and closer to true black with each generation, though, so sooner or later, I'm sure LCD's will find a way to catch up to CRT's in the contrast department. But they're not there yet.

That said, 3000:1 contrast is fairly standard for LCD's now, and most people will usually agree that that's plenty for a good picture. So it's not like LCD's have bad contrast (anymore); it's just that they're not (yet) as good at it as CRT's have always been.



That's not necessarily true. Under ideal conditions, you're right, but in the real world, CRT's can and do ghost all the time. Want to see it happen? Try plugging in a cheap, low quality cable. It'll be ghost city. Since CRT's are analog, cable quality makes a huge difference.

Modern LCD's don't ghost much, if at all, these days. 2-millisecond response time is becoming more or less standard. Of course, if you buy a screen with poorer response time, you're going to see more ghosting, but anything in the 2ms category, it should be fine.




One other thing that's important to talk about is eye-strain. CRT's cause a whole lot more of it than LCD's do. Skippy mentioned headaches, which are a common symptom. I never used to get headaches with CRT's, but I did used to get a burning sensation in my eyes after a few hours. At the end of a full day of use, my eyes would be blood red. Not good. All that stopped the day I bought my first LCD.

I can stare at an LCD literally all day long, and my eyes do just fine. Even on days when I've been up against the wall with deadlines, and I've had to work 20 hours or more to finish on time, my eyes don't end up red or burning. That, more than anything else, is why I use LCD's.

Bingo.

The eye strain difference is obvious already to me, I can look at this screen far longer than I could on my Old Monitor. As far as price, this one (W2252TQ) was on Sale at Best Buy for $289, plus I had a $50 gift card my niece gave me for Christmas, so my net price was $239. Not too bad. On the original question, this is wierd, but I mentioned before I couldn't see the 8:5 aspect ratio in the dropdown before, but today I checked auto detect and it was there, so I'm using the 1680 x 1050 at 8:5 and it looks pretty good. Thanks for the replies, especially Chosen. I was able to understand your posts without my eyes bleeding....

Thanks for the info, Chosen.

In addition, CRTs hum. Drives me crazy! They also annoy me with flicker unless they can be run at 85Hz scan rate or higher, but fortunately most do these days.

Worst of all, they make my single-coil electric guitar pickups buzz. So happy to be rid of CRT monitors!

I wonder what the environmental hazmat/landfill tradeoffs are? I suspect that CRTs are worse, but these things are often counterintuitive.

Skippy, Skippy,
Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo
Skippy, Skippy,
Skippy, Our friend ever true

We actually had to replace all the CRT's in one end of our office because the magnetic feild from the main power cable running under the office was distorting all the screen displays towards it.