suggest a monitor for me

i need an upgrade from the 17inch NOT EVEN FLAT dell monitor they sent me awhile ago. preferably black housing. CRT, not LCD or flat panel. and 19+ inches in size. i tried looking on pricegrabber and pricewatch, but the pitch and max refresh rate confused me. i dont really know what those mean. my price range is probably $100-275 or so, maybe 300 but id rather not.

does brand matter?

thanks!

 

hmm, so my gov laptop with a refresh rate of 60 isnt too good haha

 

LCDs handle refresh rates far differently. I can see/tell no difference between 60hz and 70hz on my 19in LCD.

However, even if you use DVI with one, you still get issues in games.

I'm assuming that MA is talking about the ghosting of images.

DVI helps a lot, but doesn't cure it.

But talk about a beatutiful picture you get from one

 

LCD's are a bit too expensive for me, maybe if they came down in price a couple hundred bucks then id think about them

 

MA suggested Envision as a good brand in your case.
I will definitely have to second that.
Hehe,
I got mine for $50 after rebate. That's right. $50. (Haven't seen that deal since).
I had to wait for seemed like 3 months for the rebate check, but it did get here.
I think I bought it from Office Depot.
Its 17 inches.
It does me just fine.
Around here, the Sunday papers typically have rebate sales on things like monitors, hdd, and media. Maybe they do in your area, too?

 

yea they do, but best buy, circuit city, microcenter, and all those other places dont really have all that great prices, even with the rebates. id rather buy one online for alot cheaper

 

yea, id be gaming. im kinda upgrading my setup in preparation for going back to school in the fall. and the 17in curved screen monitor dell gave me just aint cuttin it

 

holy thread ressurection batman!

what things should i be looking at for an lcd or flat panel monitor? are they good for gamers? is the picture clearer or worse than a crt? is weight and space saving the only reason to get one?

 

I would try Tiger Direct. I have two I bought from them Both 19" a Sony and a Viewsonic. I like the Sony better. They are both refuerbs and I got them for less than $200 delivered. I hope this helps. I understand right now crts are better for gaming.

 

Definitely try Office Max. They are the cheapest store I have ever seen (besides eBay of course). They also have like a ton of little free stuff almost every month. I once got a 128 DDR stick of ram for free there along with blank cd's and even a free 52x26x52 cdrw. If that doesn't work out I would try Best Buy or Comp USA. I don't know if you wanna try buying something like a monitor on the internet only because the shipping charges are going to be horrendous.

Also, I can't see the brand making that big of a difference. They will all pretty much be the same price no matter what brand and they will all work. I mean, they either work or don't work. And if they don't work you just take it back and buy another one for the same price.

 

LCD's are smooth at 60 Hz refresh rates because their elements are slower to go dark than the phosphurs in a CRT. Since they stay lit longer, there's no visible flicker. Great for still images, but that's what makes them poorer for fast movies and games. The ghost images are the individual pixels staying lit too long. Cheap & average monitors have turn-on/turn-off in the 25 millisecond range, which is way too slow for gaming. Fastest of the fast are about 16 milliseconds, which is still not quite as crisp as a CRT, but is MUCH better than earlier/slower ones.

There are currently only a couple of CRT tube makers out there, so the tube differences are far less than years ago, but there are still differences in the secondary electronics. The better monitors generally use better components, which tend to live longer, and the best ones offer superior voltage regulation to the tube. Easy way to test regulation is with a monitor test program like Nokia's monitor test, that will flash the picture between all black and all white. Poorly regulated systems suffer from "blooming", where the picture grows a bit larger in white than in black. Image size should be stable no matter what's onscreen; better regulation locks it in. There can also be differences in proper focus of the light guns, and even in good monitors, banging around during shipping can knock them out of allignment, which is one argument for buying from a store rather than online, as UPS/FEDEX can bounce them around a bit.

I'm currently using a 5 year old Samsung 19" flat screen 900IFT CRT that has .22 dot pitch (smaller is better), still crystal clear, great geometry and zero blooming. Take a look at some Samsungs while you're shopping.

 

Compaque 7550(NOT LCD)

 

thanks for the suggestions and help guys

i ended up checking out best buy and circuit city yesterday during lunch. decided on a 19inch samsung 997df. BB had it for 199, circuit city for 199 and a $20 mail in rebate. only place online according to price grabber with a lower price was a extremely shady looking company that had it for 160 something. here are some specs:

Weight 40.1 lbs.
Monitor Type Flat-Screen CRT
Screen Size (Diagonal in inches) 19
Viewable Screen Size (Diagonal in inches) 18
Maximum Resolution 1920 x 1440
Recommended Resolution 1280 x 1024
Dot Pitch (mm) .20
Horizontal Scanning Frequency 30-96KHz
Vertical Scanning Frequency 50-160Hz
Type of Input Analog

i had a bitch of a time getting it out of the box. the 2 styrofoam pieces wedged it in there pretty tight so it took a good 15 minutes of me trying to rip the damn thing out.

and a pic:


already tried UT2004 demo, toca race driver 2, and the matrix reloaded. all looked extremely good. i love being able to run ut2004 on the highest resolution. i guess really the only thing left for me to upgrade before school is a second harddrive

 

Glad you like it, Samsung makes some of the best monitors.

 

just reading reviews and evals of some of the crazier 21+inch LCD's, they mention using a DVI input or something? what the heck is that

 

If I'm not mistaken, DVI stands for Digital Video Input. It is a digital signal rather than analog. When the computer sends the signal to the monitor, it begins as a digital signal. Then the video card converts it into an analog signal (if you are using a 15-pin d-sub connection) and sends it to the monitor. If you have a monitor and a video card with DVI connections, the computer doesn't translate from digital to analog. This means that there is no quality lost in the transfer.

 

I have a Microtek 815c 18" Flat Screen. The refresh rate is 75 Hz, and it simply works great with all games. Of course, it cost a bit more than the $300.00 IROC_DIS wanted to spend. It is good to know, however, that he got a nice monitor within the price range he was considering.

Wiz -