the psychotic neurotic

established 1977 – struggling with reality ever since

Monitor hunt

So .. what exactly am I looking for? Well for a start I need an LCD monitor, somehow I don’t think a CRT would be the same. The monitor should work obviously – I can handle a broken backlight but if it works, so much the better. I haven’t decided on what kind of backlight I’m going to use – whether I leave the cold cathode lamps in place or change them for something else – EL foil or LEDs maybe. (Thanks to the Bongofish forums for educating me about the problems of using the existing CCFL backlights and the benefits of changing them to something else – before I read these posts I wouldn’t have even considered changing the backlight.)

What else? High resolution would be nice; it needs to have an external power supply (thanks again to Bongofish for explaining the merits of this); DVI input would be great but VGA will work just as well; anything else is a bonus.

Ok this shouldn’t be too hard, my checklist hardly points to to of the range equipment:

  • 15-inch 4:3 ratio working LCD monitor
  • VGA/DVI input
  • Exteral PSU
  • High resolution
  • The thinner the monitor the better

Budget? I hadn’t really thought about a budget – I suppose it would need to be significantly less than a second-hand Cintiq otherwise what’s the point? “Save the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves” as my dear old grandmother used to say (NB. I don’t mean pound as in weight measurement obviously). 15″ monitors must be dirt cheap these days – why would anyone want a 15″ monitor? Ok, for the sake of argument lets say no more than $50.

What kind? Lots of people on the Bongofish forums have had a lot of luck with Dell monitors. But I’m not picky, anything cheap that matches the specifications above will be fine.

eBay here I come!

Tags: , , , , ,

Leave a Reply