What would you do?

[Ardan]

I have a buddy who asked me a question about monitors since I was previously looking around for one. His CRT is having focus troubles now (never did before) and he told me what he does. He plays games (looks forward to buying HL2 later on when it is released) and watches movies, yet does a lot of typing and reads a lot of articles. I remember seeing a Samsung 191T and it looked great in games, so I know thats NOT a problem.

What he asked me was if he should buy a CRT now, or wait until he has a new job and get a 17" LCD with a low response time instead. What do you guys think about that? I personally think that if he is willing to wait and has a new job lined up that he should wait to get a 17" LCD instead, since I know he really desires a good picture. I have seen the Hitachi and others and I think its the best idea.

Your thoughts?

 

[Jolyon33]

Depends on whats most important to him. They have improved LCD refresh speeds but for hardcore gaming a CRT is still better. However if great image quality is where its at for him then an LCD is where its at.

 

[Ardan]

Well I wouldn't describe him as a hardcore gamer...he has very few games on his computer at the moment. He's also a first-year Computer Science student and is going to start programming so I think a good one with a low response rate is best. Of course, if the monitor fails tomorrow, we'll have to get a CRT

 

I'd go with the LCD, prices are droppiing like rocks
But more importantly there is nothing as good as staring at some problamatic code on an LCD for an hour
but on a CRT (maybe this isn't true for everyone) I find there is alot of eyestrain

 

[Ardan]

Oh I totally agree. I am in the same area and I hated doing that at home. The school had very nice LCDs and I always stay there to do long work because my eyes aren't in danger of exploding . So what do you think, maybe the Hitachi? I find that 17" LCD has a good rep on here and other places, and it looks like it would be in his range after a few weeks of work (or less). I hear it also does a good job of going down to 1024x768 (for games) but since he doesn't really play too many games, I don't think it is something to worry about. He has a GeForce4 Ti4200 128Mb card and doesn't plan to upgrade it...but with an Athlon XP 1800+, I don't know how well it would do at that resolution in halflife 2 .

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

If hes going to spend many hours at a time on it, get an LCD because it'll relieve his eyes a lot...

 

check the Hot Deals forum, some nice LCD deals there in the last couple months.

 

[Ardan]

don't need to tell me that
Checked it many many times

 

[squidman]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga
If hes going to spend many hours at a time on it, get an LCD because it'll relieve his eyes a lot...

Actually, its all a gimmick. Your eyes get tired, because of the light changes: iris opens, closes, opens, closes. That tires your nerve - hence your eyes get tired. When you open a word document - its bright, your pupils become small. THen you open a "dark" game, your pupils dilate. Explosion in a game - quickly becomes small, then dilated again. Absolutely no difference, whether u have a crt or lcd: both produce light changes.


The other thing. No matter how u twist and turn it CRT's are the #1 quality-picture producers. LCD's have the "color-shifting" (and it doesnt matter how much money u spend) - when you move your head to the left, colors become brownish, right - light grayish. LCD are very bad when it comes to games. The sharpness drops drastically as the resolutions go up (akward, isnt it?). Also, in operation flashpoint LCD displays some funky-ass colors! Hate LCD.

LCD's pro's are purely ergonomical. Long time ago, LCD pro was that it had no EM fields. But todays CRT have VERY little EM field, and are not harmful at all, evne if u stare at the monitor for 12 hours. People buy LCD cuz its: compact, uses less energy (who cares?) and is...compact.

I have a 17 inch Viewsonic Professional monitor. It costs less, than good 17 inch LCD, yet its colours are AWESOME! .25 dot pitch? hell yeah. Really sharp. Since im planning on buying a new VGA, i wish it was 19 inches. But when i got this one 2.8 years ago, it was 390 USD, so it was a lot for me already.

So i say, FLATSCREEN CRT ALL THE WAY!

 

[squidman]

"LCD does not tire your eyes" = "nForce 2 has 4.2 gig memory bandwidth" LOL!
Translation for the following statements: "LCD does not tire your eyes if you look on the PC's wallpaper that is equally bright to your rooms environment", and "nForce2 has 4.2 gb/s memory bandwidth if onboard IGP is used, and is reserved for igp only"

Sounds different, doesnt it? Reminds me of a saying: "I dont lie, i just stretch the truth".

If i wanted small, id get a plasma. LCD are just...bad.

 

[Ardan]

Either way it doesn't really matter. Yes, your eyes do get tired after a while but not if the users aren't stupid enough to stare at the screen for 3 hours straight. An LCD for this kid is logical. He is willing to spend $500 (the Hitachi is $499 on Newegg) for one, is doing an increasingly larger amount of programming/text-related things, and is a COLLEGE STUDENT. Compactness is always a plus, because I would find that to be a real pain to have to lug some 19" CRT up to a dorm every so often. Its much easier with a nice compact thing such as an LCD.