[SimeyTheLimey]

My old LaCie 21" monitor seems to be dying on me. The color has started shifting wildly. Does that sound terminal to you guys?

Because I was off today I decided to trot down to the Apple Store to see what my options are in case I have to get a new monitor.

I took a look at the 20" Apple Cinema Display, but I was pretty disappointed. The image quality was good, but the sucker was small. I was really surprised. I was expecting something the size of what I use at home. I didn't realize that the vertical dimension was so restricted, and that the 20" is mostly in width that isn't useful to me.

My problem is that I deal with text and I want to be able to view a complete page without making the text too small. That means I need vertical height, not horizontal. I guess widescreen isn't much use to me unless I could afford at least the 23" screen (not this year). So much for Apple.

Another store had a Samsung 21" with a more useful aspect ration, but it was pretty fuzzy compared to the Apple and my CRT. Does anyone have a quality solution under $800? If not, I may have to get another jumbo CRT (if my other one finally croaks).

I guess my discussion question is why Apple doesn't make a monitor that can be rotated 90 degrees for us wordsmiths? I have said before that I find it frustrating that Apple only seems to market to one niche that they have in mind (in this case I assume graphics people), and they ignore the rest of us.

[ManOfSteal]

Have you checked out Formac's Displays?

[The Oracle]

There have been a couple threads in peripherals about Dell 20" LCD monitors, and the comments have been positive. I'm considering a 20" normal instead of a wide-aspect for the same reasons you mentioned.

[Twilly Spree]

How useful is widescreen in a monitor?

Extremely.

[effgee]

Get a regular (4:3) aspect ratio 19"-21" TFT with pivot function - as long as you have a compatible graphics card (e.g. a newer Radeon), you can turn the screen 90� and use 1024x1280 / 1200x1600 for text editing. Also, check out Sony's TFT's - a bit pricey but very good quality.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by The Oracle:
There have been a couple threads in peripherals about Dell 20" LCD monitors, and the comments have been positive. I'm considering a 20" normal instead of a wide-aspect for the same reasons you mentioned.

Maybe I will trot down to a Dell store to take a look at one of those. The Formac display is also interesting. Does anyone know of a reseller who sells them discounted at all? I see also that LaCie is also coming out with a 20.1" LCD in a normal aspect ratio. Or I suppose I could just get another ElectronBlue. Or just struggle along with the one I have (which of course now seems to be working fine!).

Twilly Spree: please explain. What would I gain with sidescreen when in effect it just makes the screen smaller than the size quoted implies? The 20" Apple didn't appear to me to have any more useful space than a 17".

[Cadaver]

I currently have a Dell 20.1" 2001FP 1600x1200 pixel (standard aspect ratio) display at home. Its a very high quality monitor. Crystal clear text and good color consistency (don't know how accurate as I'm not a graphics professional, but at least I can tell its consistent). It also will rotate 90� for viewing a whole page in portrait mode. These monitors can also be found for as little as $550 - which IMO is an amazing price for a 20" LCD.

Just remember that the only Mac-compatible video cards that support display rotation ("VersaVision" in ATI-speak) are the RETAIL Mac Editions of the: Radeon 8500 Pro (with recent firmware update), 9000 Pro (with recent firmware update) 9200 PCI, 9800 Pro (and Pro SE for G5s) and X800 XT (G5-only) cards.

My G5 at home has an X800 XT (previously had a 9800 Pro SE) and my G4 at work has a Radeon 8500 Pro with ATI's firmware update, and both work very well in portrait mode.

Display rotation is unfortunately a hardware/firmware function; it can't be added with a simple piece of software. So until Apple allows ATI to build a firmware patch for the OEM cards, users with Apple-supplied Radeon cards are out of luck.

And AFAIK, there isn't a way to do display rotation with any of Apple's nVidia offerings, either.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
What would I gain with widescreen when in effect it just makes the screen smaller than the size quoted implies? The 20" Apple didn't appear to me to have any more useful space than a 17".

Depends on what you do. Widescreen is good for people who end up with tons of application palettes on their screen - they can push them off in to the extra horizontal space and not loose any room for the main window. Photoshop comes to mind.

For writers and people who work more with portrait-aspect material, then a widescreen display may not be ideal.

[BasketofPuppies]

People forget all monitors are measured diagonally, and therefore widescreen displays are also shortscreen displays.

The 20" Dell people praise is good for general computing, but if you need true colors or fast refresh rates, look elsewhere.

I haven't looked into it myself so I don't know how good (or bad) it is, but LaCie makes a 20" LCD that can be rotated 90 degrees for $969 (or $1199 with additional accessories).

Originally posted by effgee:
Get a regular (4:3) aspect ratio 19"-21" TFT with pivot function - as long as you have a compatible graphics card (e.g. a newer Radeon), you can turn the screen 90� and use 1024x1280 /

That's not 4:3. 4:3 would be 1280x960. They seemed to have broken the rule there.

[saltines17]

Originally posted by hayesk:
That's not 4:3. 4:3 would be 1280x960. They seemed to have broken the rule there.

All 17" LCDs I'm aware of are 1280x1024, for whatever reason.

[Superchicken]

When you have tons of pallets in Photoshop etc I imagine it'd be pretty sweet... I've thought of getting an external for with my PowerBook.

[sworthy]

this looks nice

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by sworthy:
this looks nice

Interesting, I bet it would look nicer if they took the foot off of the 23" display.

[itistoday]

Originally posted by hayesk:
That's not 4:3. 4:3 would be 1280x960. They seemed to have broken the rule there.

WTF. You're right. What's going on??? I always assumed that was 4:3 (since I use this resolution and have a 4:3 monitor).

[Joshua]

I actually find widescreen very useful for text. I can have two full Word documents open (or a Word document and Lexis) side by side on my 17" PB without any problem.

[tooki]

Indeed, 17-19" LCDs are all 5:4 aspect ratio. It is kinda annoying, isn't it?

Anyhow, considering Apple's current bent on widescreen displays, am I the only one who remembers the old Apple Portrait Display? It was a 14" (I think) black-and-white CRT in a vertical orientation, sold for its ability to display a whole page of text without scrolling. (And the B&W CRT was a very pleasant text display.)

tooki

[f1000]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Display rotation is unfortunately a hardware/firmware function; it can't be added with a simple piece of software. So until Apple allows ATI to build a firmware patch for the OEM cards, users with Apple-supplied Radeon cards are out of luck.

Somehow, I doubt this is true. Remapping a screen from widescreen to vertical should be a trivial and non-CPU intensive operation. I used to have software that allowed me to flip the screen and have a virtual (larger) desktop in the Classic OS days.

The real problem here is that LCD's use a polarizing screen that only appears good in one viewing orientation. If you take a widescreen LCD and rotate it 90 degrees, each eye is going to see a slightly different color. If you don't believe me, turn your head 90 degrees and look at your LCD screen with one eye closed and then the other. This is the reason why LCD designers always orient the "grain" of the polarizing filter to the viewing plane.

[Mafia]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
Extremely.

touche, i could never go back to 4:3.

[Agent69]

HP makes the L2335, which is a widescreen 23" LCD screen that runs at 1920x1200. The screen supports a portrait mode as well. $1599.00.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Joshua:
I actually find widescreen very useful for text. I can have two full Word documents open (or a Word document and Lexis) side by side on my 17" PB without any problem.

Maybe it is my eyes. I tried that with the 20" and could see useful possibilities -- especially with cutting and pasting. But the 20" gave so little vertical height that 12 point text on a full page document was teeny. My estimate is about 1/3 smaller than the same page would render on my CRT (I use 1280x960). I would quickly tire of squinting at the screen.

If I could get the 23" inch display I would be set as I checked it out and it looked fine. But that is out of my budget. As it is, my old 21" CRT seems to be acting a bit better, so maybe I can put off dealing with this for a while.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by tooki:
Anyhow, considering Apple's current bent on widescreen displays, am I the only one who remembers the old Apple Portrait Display? It was a 14" (I think) black-and-white CRT in a vertical orientation, sold for its ability to display a whole page of text without scrolling. (And the B&W CRT was a very pleasant text display.)

My high school computer lab was full of those 10 years ago. I always wanted to use one of the LC575s tho cause they had color screens and were faster than the IIcis hooked up to those tall B&W ones.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by Mafia:
touche, i could never go back to 4:3.

me neither.

I think a 20" widescreen is a dash small, so I got the 23" HD. It will do for whatever work you may need it in. At that resolution there is always enough space, vertical or horizontal and the physical size is big too.

30" HD if you got the $$$s

[sugar_coated]

Wider the screen more likely the head will turn.

[OwlBoy]

Widescreen = better movie screen = less work getting done...

-Owl

[voyageur]

I do a lot with Excel spreadsheets in landscape layout, and widescreen is great for that. And movies. I don't have trouble reading the text of a Word doc when it's displayed full-page on my 20", and I can place two pages side by side. The 20" may look short but it's still got 1050 pixels north to south. I'd say the only advantage I would see to a portrait display would be in browsing long web pages.

[sworthy]

I have the same problem with my 20" being small for text, so I usually bump up the page to 115%. I can still have a full page visible (it cuts off just a bit of the top and bottom margins, but you aren't using those anyways).

[willed]

I guess in Word you can just use Normal view and it'll wrap to the size of the window so it doesn't really matter how tall the screen is.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by willed:
I guess in Word you can just use Normal view and it'll wrap to the size of the window so it doesn't really matter how tall the screen is.

That only helps if you don't care what your document looks like -- which is never the case in a well-prepared document. Especially not in legal documents which are typically formatted rather carefully into sections and headings. You need to see how they fall on the page and the best way to do that is to be able to see the entire page at once.

[f1000]

It probably doesn't help that legal size paper is longer than letter size paper.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
That only helps if you don't care what your document looks like -- which is never the case in a well-prepared document. Especially not in legal documents which are typically formatted rather carefully into sections and headings. You need to see how they fall on the page and the best way to do that is to be able to see the entire page at once.

Actually if you care what your document looks like you never use Word.

Either QXP or LaTeX, depending on budget and skill.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
Actually if you care what your document looks like you never use Word.

Either QXP or LaTeX, depending on budget and skill.

Law firms and clients use Word.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Really? I'm pretty sure that most lawyers use AppleWorks, because of its multiplatform capabilities and bleeding edge feature set.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:


Law firms and clients use Word.

I don't give a lawyer's brain what they use. I'm sure retards use Word but that hasn't anything to do with the fact that people who care about how documents look don't use Word. Which is what I said.

Don't put words in my mouth sonny.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by JohnSmithXTREME:
Really? I'm pretty sure that most lawyers use AppleWorks, because of its multiplatform capabilities and bleeding edge feature set.

Well you'd be wrong. I have worked in three large and one small law firms, and one government legal office and toured half a dozen other AMLAW 100 law firms' offices during interviews. I have never seen an Apple in any of them, let alone Appleworks.

Twilly: can it with the "sonny" crap. I need a computer for business use at home to be compatible with the systems used in a major law firm and to be compatible with the firm's clients, who are also mostly major firms. The industry standard is Word on a PC. At home I can get away with a Mac running Word for Mac. But I am not about to spoil my work by hobbling on non-compliant software no matter how pretty some graphics design puke thinks it is. They won't be paying me to fix formatting errors when I send documents back and forth.

f1000: legal size paper is almost never used these days. Law firms use regular letter.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
I don't give a lawyer's brain what they use. I'm sure retards use Word but that hasn't anything to do with the fact that people who care about how documents look don't use Word. Which is what I said.

Don't put words in my mouth sonny.

Who are these people that care so much about the way a document looks that they don't use Word? The majority of lawyers, professionals, scholars, etc., use Word. They only people whom I can imagine use LaTex are homeless and can't afford a proper version of MS Office.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Well you'd be wrong. I have worked in three large and one small law firms, and one govenment legal office and toured half a dozen other AMLAW 100 law firms' offices during interviews. I have never seen an Apple in any of them, let alone Appleworks.

I was being sarcastic, sorry. I was poking fun at the fact that AppleWorks was by far the lamest word processor money could buy.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Well you'd be wrong.

Twilly: can it with the "sonny" crap. I need a computer for business use at home to be compatible with the systems used in a major law firm and to be compatible with the firm's clients, who are also mostly major firms. The industry standard is Word on a PC. At home I can get away with a Mac running Word for Mac. But I am not about to spoil my work by hobbling on non-compliant software no matter how pretty some graphics design puke thinks it is. They won't be paying me to fix formatting errors when I send documents back and forth.

Odds are you're a lot younger than me..

regardless I was not advising you to use any application in particular. This thread is about monitors. OTOH claiming that people use Word if they care about the layout is simply flat out wrong so for other users that don't know better it was clarified.

People use Word for one reason only: compatibility. That's fine, but it has nothing to do with good layout. That's simply not a feature of Word. If you care how your document looks, then you use QXP or LaTeX.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by JohnSmithXTREME:
Who are these people that care so much about the way a document looks that they don't use Word? The majority of lawyers, professionals, scholars, etc., use Word. They only people whom I can imagine use LaTex are homeless and can't afford a proper version of MS Office.

Another worthless John Smit post framed and saved.

Thanks now go die.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
Another worthless John Smit post framed and saved.

Thanks now go die.

Actually homeless people probably don't even like LaTex because of its terrible interface and incompatibility.

edit: after some thought, I remembered that Koko the gorilla used latex to write a story about food once, so I suppose somebody out there likes it.

[effgee]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
... I'm sure retards use Word but that hasn't anything to do with the fact that people who care about how documents look don't use Word. ...

Taking into consideration what you are saying (factually) and especially the way you are saying it (tonality) let me tell you that you obviously are an idiot.

Yes, InDesign, Quark, FrameMaker (for tech docs) et al give you much greater control over the formatting of your document. But if you had even the slightest idea of what you are talking about you would realize that most, if not all, people with an IQ that surpasses that of a slice of Wonderbread will take a Word document from a seasoned user over an InDesign document whipped up by some pimply-faced graphic design trainee any time of the day.

Hell, as long as you know what you are doing you can create a great looking document in TextEdit.

Maybe you should take a closer look at these things before hanging out the "if-you-use-Word-you-must-be-a-retard" attitude and subsequently making yourself look like you should be taking the short bus to school/work

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by JohnSmithXTREME:
Actually homeless people probably don't even like LaTex because of its terrible interface and incompatibility.

edit: after some thought, I remembered that Koko the gorilla used latex to write a story about food once, so I suppose somebody out there likes it.

Koko the gorilla.. oh the humor. Will it ever end? I don't even dare to hope.

@effgee

thanks for the unnecessary name calling and personal attack

For the rest of you I'll make it perfectly simple: no-one uses Word for layout if he cares squat about said layout.

Politcal correctness is for women and the weak minded.

[effgee]

@ Twilly - you are most welcome.

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
... Politcal correctness is for women and the weak minded.

Agreed - but why complain about me calling you an idiot, then? Especially after your all-encompassing and factually wrong "Word-User = Retard" statement? One standard only, if you please.



Let me guess - writing technical documents is part of your your job - yes or no?

[Twilly Spree]

@effgee

I complained about the political correctness you showed when I used the word "retard".

Other than that, I'd like to take credit for saying Word-User = Retard, but alas nay. I did not.

Yes writing technical documents is a part of my job, even if it is a small part.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
bla bla bla I'm from Floriduh and I'm so mean spirited

Look, if you want, I can send you an email teaching you how to download microsoft word using bittorrent, then you could have a proper word processor rather than latex.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by JohnSmithXTREME:
Look, if you want, I can send you an email teaching you how to download microsoft word using bittorrent, then you could have a proper word processor rather than latex.

You're like the Energizer bunny! Just go on and on and on and on...

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
You're like the Energizer bunny! Just go on and on and on and on...

As long as you keep biting, I'll keep baiting

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by JohnSmithXTREME:
As long as you keep biting, I'll keep baiting

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:

#


(experimenting to find minimal ammount of text input required to illicit a response)

[effgee]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
I complained about the political correctness you showed when I used the word "retard".

Nah, I wasn't tickled in the least by the "handicapped" part. The stereotyping did rise my blood pressure by a point or two, I have to admit. A tool will always be as effective/useless as the person who uses it. Latex is great as long as you know what you're doing with it - and so are InDesign, FrameMaker and Word. It's not about the hammer - it's about the person using it and the job he/she intends to get done. Anything else is a crock of bull dung.

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
Other than that, I'd like to take credit for saying Word-User = Retard, but alas nay. I did not.

That's not how I understood it - but I'll take your word for it. And in that case, I apologize for jumping the gun.

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
Yes writing technical documents is a part of my job, even if it is a small part.

Somehow, that seemed rather obvious - dunno why.