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20040801 Sunday August 01, 2004

23"

23 Incher

I arrived home this afternoon and found that my new 23" monitor had arrived. This thing is fricken' awesome! It's so crisp, clear and BIG!! The only bad part is that I thought it supported Windows out-of-the-box - by having a VGA port. No such luck. It looks like I'll have to buy a DVI male to VGA male adapter - or possible new DVI video cards. New video cards would suck since I'd have to buy 3 for my two Linux boxes (Fedora and Suse) and one for my Windows box.

Regardless, it plugs right into my PowerBook and works great with it. Posted in Mac OS X at Aug 01 2004, 08:44:03 PM MDT 8 Comments

Comments:

This is my next "toy" to accompany with PowerBook - I just wish the PowerBook would drive the 30" beast.

Posted by Rob Harrop on August 02, 2004 at 10:47 AM MDT #

If it works with PC via DVI, I'd suggest going that route and not fudging it with a VGA to DVI adapter. It makes a difference. I have a Dell 2001FP 20" and while the VGA connection is acceptable, the difference when I moved up to DVI was noticible. I even flipped back and forth when hooked up to the same video card to verify that I wasn't just seeing what I wanted to see. DVI wins on big displays; hands down.

Posted by Matt Welch on August 02, 2004 at 11:10 AM MDT #

Damn, that's what I was afraid of. Oh well, I guess I'll go out and buy 3 DVI cards.

Posted by Matt Raible on August 02, 2004 at 11:20 AM MDT #

I'll also chime in and say DVI makes a big difference, not just in sharpness but in color quality. Gradients look much smoother with DVI on my Dell UltraSharp. Mr. Welch is causing me monitor envy, mine's only 18" :)

Posted by James A. Hillyerd on August 02, 2004 at 11:55 AM MDT #

I discovered that not only do I need 3 DVI-I cards, but I also need a new DVI KVM Switch. Doh! This is going to be a lot spendier than I thought. Oh well, it's a solution that's likely to last for years to come.

Posted by Matt Raible on August 02, 2004 at 02:10 PM MDT #

Matt, could you post a crude estimate of your productivity gains using the new monitor vs. your old setup sometime in the future? I'm curious to see the benefits when working on your powerbook, windows pc, and/or linux when developing. Just wondering if this is really a toy, or will it pay for itself over time? Thanks, Ted

Posted by Ted on August 02, 2004 at 03:17 PM MDT #

I remember reading an article in PC World I think, that said that going from a 15" to a 19" (at the time 15's were common and 19's were well over a grand) would increase productivity for normal office workers such that the 19" would pay for itself within a couple of months. That came from not having to scroll so much and window switching. I can only imagine what the 23" would do.

I did some work for a railroad and all the engineers and developers had dual 21's and it was awesome. IDE in one monitor and web browser/whatever in the other. Given the slow machines they had it was great. I just looked on Apple's site and it seems the prices have really dropped since the last time I saw these things. I remember when they were like $6,000. Now the 23" is just a bit more than what a high end 21 CRT costs.

Posted by Robert McIntosh on August 05, 2004 at 01:37 PM MDT #

I am confused, what part of VGA is Windows specific? Isn't it just a problem with your video card actually not having DVI out? Probably a good idea anyway to use VGA on an HD screen. Anyway, congrats on your purchase. Let us know if you have any problems with it.

Posted by david on October 24, 2005 at 09:08 AM MDT #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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