questions about buying a computer monitor

[bpesta22]

Greetings

My skool gives us money to buy computer equipment, but it has to be gateway stuff. I was thinking of buying this monitor. Can anyone tell me if it's any good / reasonably priced?

http://www.gateway.com/programs/widescreen/24_specs.php


Also, would I (or should I?) buy a new video card? I have a RADEON 9550 with 256 mb of memory.


Any advice on what I should do to optimize the thing is appreciated.

[DangerousBeliefs]

Are you planning on doing graphic design?

I sure hope your "skool" isn't anywhere near my district or I'll be on the phone to them tomorrow yelling about wasting money on expensive computer equipment that could be better spent other things.

[bpesta22]

Are you planning on doing graphic design?

I sure hope your "skool" isn't anywhere near my district or I'll be on the phone to them tomorrow yelling about wasting money on expensive computer equipment that could be better spent other things.

No, nothing like that-- I'm not squandering money. It's actually something our union negotiated, so it's a part of my compensation. It's for a university, no childrens were harmed in the negotiation of the contract.

I spend vast amounts of work time staring at a monitor, so I figured a good one would be a decent use of the money.

So, any thoughts on the above?

[Reality Believer]

Greetings

My skool gives us money to buy computer equipment, but it has to be gateway stuff. I was thinking of buying this monitor. Can anyone tell me if it's any good / reasonably priced?

http://www.gateway.com/programs/widescreen/24_specs.php


Also, would I (or should I?) buy a new video card? I have a RADEON 9550 with 256 mb of memory.


Any advice on what I should do to optimize the thing is appreciated.

Looks like a winning combination. The monitor and card are quite capable of doing anything you need to do, including gaming or video editing. 24" monitors are the leading edge and you pay a premium. If you drop down to a 22", the price will dramatically lower and will be every bit as useful. I have a 22" Viewsonic and love it.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm waiting for the price of this one to come down:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/monitor_3007wfp?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

~~ Paul

[Tief]

Will the card run at 1920x1200?

If so, I would not upgrade it until you switch to Vista and DX10 :)

[JonnyFive]

If you're using it for general non-gaming tasks, you should be fine with your current setup. The price they list seems fairly reasonable for the size, although RB is correct about the 22". You can save a couple hundred bucks, if the size difference isn't that important to you.

If, however, you do game, your video card probably isn't going to be able to handle that display's native resolution (1900x1200) with anything released recently. Downscaling the resolution will work fine, but either will look fuzzy because the image will need to be scaled, or will be a smaller size if you choose not to scale the image (not sure if the 9550 can do that or not).

If you want to talk video card upgrades, that's a whole different beast. Since your current card is an AGP interface card, you may have to upgrade to a PCI-Express compatible motherboard, as AGP is very rapidly becoming a dead issue. You can still find decent cards using AGP, but you'll get a much better cost/performance ratio from the PCI-E cards now.

But, like I said, unless you're intending to pick up some newer games and play them at the monitor's native resolution, it may not be an issue in the first place.

[GreNME]

I'm waiting for the price of this one to come down:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/monitor_3007wfp?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

~~ Paul

Word. The nice thing about the recent Dell branded monitors is that they are comparable in features to Apple branded monitors, but at a lower price point and often higher brightness or contrast ratio.

I loves me the 19" standard and 20" widescreen models I have...

[yairhol]

I'm waiting for the price of this one to come down:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/monitor_3007wfp?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

~~ Paul

How much is it now?
How low will it go in price?

[Beerina]

If it's any consolation, most manufacturers of monitors just slap a plastic wrapper, power supply, and controls around the core electronics, which come from the same handful of vendors.

Unfortunately, the specs don't list who really makes the core flatscreen panel. That's some seriously expensive R&D to do that, though, so it's usually some giant multinational like Panasonic or Sony or somesuch. My own company makes tons of consumer electronics, but we don't make the core high-cost pieces like CD/DVD mechanisms or screen guts.