[theamazingrando]

I am a graphic designer and live in front of my monitor. I currently have the blue and white studio display. I ordered a G4 733 and am tossing around the idea of the Cinema Display. It would be nice to have the extra real estate, and the vertical viewing angle is 160 degrees instead of 140, but it is expensive. In Canada, it is $6000, which buys a G4 and studio display.

My Question: Do those of you who have them think they are worth the dollars, or would I be better to buy 2 15" Panels and use one for palettes?

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The Amazing Rando

[cteselle]

you should save your money, and buy an SGI 1600sw w/ Multilink Adapter. You will get the same resolution as the Cinema Display (1600x1024) at almost 1/3 the cost ($1500)

I do not know if the nVidea would work with this though... I know that the Radeon will, but I think you would need an ADC->DVI converter of some sort...

You can check it out at: http://www.sgi.com/flatpanel/

Hope this helps...

[theamazingrando]

Thanks. It seems that the SGI 1600 does not run digital like the Mac displays though I might be wrong. Also, I am unsure if cramming 1600x1200 into the 17.3 diagonal makes things too small to see. The Cinema Display is 22" at the same resolution. Are you using this SGI display and are you happy with it?

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The Amazing Rando

I just bought the 1600SW and it's really a nice display. I sold my Cinema display recently and wanted the same resolution. The cinema display was nice; but I didn't like the fact that it took up my whole desk and was extremely heavy. Also, it just isn't "adjustable" for viewing--meaning that you can't tilt/turn the display or raise and lower it to suit your viewing position. The only other thing that bothered me about the display was that for the $4000+ that I spent you'd think that it could be a bit better on the quality. Okay--I know that it's difficult to produce a consistently "perfect" display this size but I had somewhere around 10-15 "stuck" pixels which were quite annoying (if only they would get stuck as black and not bright green and red ;-).

The SGI is an amazing display--the size is an issue, but I find that it's no smaller than my 19" at 1280x1024 though. Also, the quality of the display is fabulous and everything is adjustable. I mean height, tilt--even the backlight intensity and color warmth through the MultiLink adaptor can be messed with. BTW--I'm using the cube+radeon out the VGA port; works like a champ!

[theamazingrando]

Thanks for the great feedback. I will have a closer look at the SGI