New Monitor; all thats left, simple hope . . . ?

[Sutton Warrior]

The new monitor thing has gon on a bit, making a mountin out of a mole hill . . . ? thats what I thought, untill I started looking into whats avaliable? Video games seem to have muddied the water?

 

However, with guidance from AG, a bit of reading ans reserch, thisng became clearer . . . thats what I thought, 22" was the way to go, PC World had as good a deal as anyone and the product can be seen, felt and fiddled with. Walked onto the monitor display isle, poor quality promo video being shown. So got me an assistant, we tried the 3 short lised monitors on a dedicated computer, still poor quality, thats Saturday.

 

You guys Saturday night, seemed to think the video chip/card were to blame, PC World assitant was trying to tell me it was the way Vista did things?

 

Slept on it, went back this morning, diferent assistant, again, very helpfull. Found a better PC . . . more expensive, £700, running a 24" Samsung monitor, not very well I might ad. But we presed on, to no avail, I was about to walk out monitor less. I spied a budget PC at the end of the isle doing a great job, all be it on a 20" monitor. To cut to the chase, the 'expensive' PC's could not handle 1600x1050 resolution.

 

My god, the set up to sell computers was mismatched, both the assistants Sat and Sun had not got a clue, I had to work things through in my mind, direct them to do this, do that, and you have all seen how inept I am when it comes to technical.

But I got there in the end, discovering just how critical resolution match is to what you see on screen.

 

I prefered the HP, the menu was more intuative, its £15 cheaper ordred on line and colected from store, and I prefer the colour presentation, with the ability to set the colour profile using a supplied dedicated CD/program. Plus, as I have an uptodate HP printer, One suspects 'what one sees on screen is more likly to be what is printed out', a nieve hope I supose, but that all I'v got , simple hope

 

SW

[poledark]

Matching the products makes sense SW. We have all learnt a bit from this exercise I think Pretty obvious I suppose, that if you get a bigger monitor and try to fit the same low res that you have on a 15" then the pixels will just get bigger and rougher. Maybe those PC world guys had "set up" the displays themselves and set the res too low..far better to let the Card do it for you, mine defaults to the "native resolution" of monitor.

 

So it would seem there is a basic rule here, bigger screen/higher resolution/sharper pics.

 

Using the Graphics card, I can set everthing up if I want, even 3D view to smooth out the diagonals, with preview so you can compare results instantly.

 

Good fun all this isn't it

 

Den

Edited January 11, 2009 by poledark

[Sutton Warrior]

Matching the products makes sense SW. We have all learnt a bit from this exercise I think Pretty obvious I suppose, that if you get a bigger monitor and try to fit the same low res that you have on a 15" then the pixels will just get bigger and rougher. Maybe those PC world guys had "set up" the displays themselves and set the res too low..far better to let the Card do it for you, mine defaults to the "native resolution" of monitor.

 

So it would seem there is a basic rule here, bigger screen/higher resolution/sharper pics.

 

Using the Graphics card, I can set everthing up if I want, even 3D view to smooth out the diagonals, with preview so you can compare results instantly.

 

Good fun all this isn't it

 

Den

 

I hate it!!!! I've said it before, 'I dont like change' . . . for precisly the reasons I'm encountering, one feels like one is being riped off. If it was'nt for you guys on here, I would be at their mercy! One quickly senses the lack of compitence of assistantce . . . ? 'pay penuts you get monkeys'. The expensive computer that was being displayed with a 24" screen had not got a 1600x1050 option, higher, (1080 I think) and lower, but no 1050, which I assume is a standard resolution from what I'v see. Its just bad form, people are being palmed off with **ap! and they are unaware.

 

I'v been lucky to be able to draw on good advise, had enough kneck to get the shop assistant to drag monitors around from isle to isle, plug and unplug for comparison, and learned in the process. Looking at customers during my 3 or 4 hours spent at PC world over the weekend, no one was questioning the sales persons pitch, just nodding politly and paying their hard earned. I canot believe my experiance is unique, or, that I am an aquard, grumpy and dificult customer? In fact the assistant today, shook my hand, thanked me, saying he had learned something, and that the experiance was better than the normal box selling execise? And I'm a numpty when it comes to computers???

 

SW

Edited January 11, 2009 by Sutton Warrior

[corydoras]

This is quite a simple situation guys. Every LCD display has it's 'optimum' or 'native resolution'. Your display will look it's best when our gtaphics card is set to this resolution. Any other resolutions that you try to use will be interpolated by the hardware in the monitor and will look awful.

Edited January 11, 2009 by corydoras

[Sutton Warrior]

This is quite a simple situation guys. Every LCD display has it's 'optimum' or 'native resolution'. Your display will look it's best when our gtaphics card is set to this resolution. Any other resolutions that you try to use will be interpolated by the hardware in the monitor and will look awful.

 

Hay there Corydoras, of course mate . . . I think even computer numpties like me has worked that one out now Its 'PC World' that seem to have trouble understanding this 'simple fact' Buyer beware, me thinks.

 

SW

[corydoras]

Hay there Corydoras, of course mate . . . I think even computer numpties like me has worked that one out now Its 'PC World' that seem to have trouble understanding this 'simple fact' Buyer beware, me thinks.

 

SW

Sorry SW. Grannie, eggs sucking...

PC World is one of these places that I try to avoid if I can, followed closely by Maplin. I'll use them if it's a Sunday afternoon or any other time when I need something NOW, otherwise I buy all my kit from the net. My last IT purchase was my printer, a Canon PIXMA iP500. I love it. I've printed loads with it and it has hardly used any ink. I bought that from Amazon.

[Sutton Warrior]

Sorry SW. Grannie, eggs sucking...

PC World is one of these places that I try to avoid if I can, followed closely by Maplin. I'll use them if it's a Sunday afternoon or any other time when I need something NOW, otherwise I buy all my kit from the net. My last IT purchase was my printer, a Canon PIXMA iP500. I love it. I've printed loads with it and it has hardly used any ink. I bought that from Amazon.

 

 

You keep telling this 'Grannie' how to suck eggs mate, I new nothing on the subject a week ago!

 

Canon, that was one that took top honners in 'Gadget Show' best printers, Steve put a link for it from U-Tube.

 

Trouble is Corydoras, we numpties, have to rely on the PC World's of this world, and it is obvious, they are not doing us any favours. Maplins, I have had good advise and help there, Ipswich branch, speak as we find?

 

So thanks again to you and all on here for the help you freely offer, with out it, I would have been money out of pocket, and with an inferior product.

 

SW

[corydoras]

You keep telling this 'Grannie' how to suck eggs mate, I new nothing on the subject a week ago!

 

Canon, that was one that took top honners in 'Gadget Show' best printers, Steve put a link for it from U-Tube.

 

Trouble is Corydoras, we numpties, have to rely on the PC World's of this world, and it is obvious, they are not doing us any favours. Maplins, I have had good advise and help there, Ipswich branch, speak as we find?

 

So thanks again to you and all on here for the help you freely offer, with out it, I would have been money out of pocket, and with an inferior product.

 

SW

Maplin. There are two in Southampton. The 'old' Maplin up on Bevois Valley Road, it has been there for years. Most of the staff that work in that shop know their products very well can;t fault them on that score. There is another 'new' Maplin in the town centre, just next to the Bargate. Nice shiny new shop, much bigger than the old shop. Staffed by trendy young things that are so thick the can't walk and talk at the same time.

 

It was more the prices of the two shops I was moaning about. Be wary about buying kit for a Vista PC in Maplin. When I was running Vista I asked them for Webcam, I was assured it would be OK for Vista, even although it only said XP on the box. When I took it home it did not work. When I looked on the manufacturers site to find a driver I discovered that not only was there no Vista driver, but the last XP Driver had been released in 2002 or some other time in IT pre-history. To Maplin's credit they took it back without question and I spent another £10 for a Logitech, which works fine with both XP and Vista.

 

SW, chesters will disagree no doubt but the magazine PC Pro has an 'A list' of the best products that they have reviewed. Now I know that reviews in magazines have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but PC Pro are well known for slating kit that they don't like.

 

If I am buying something I usually have a look at the PC Pro A List. I may not BUY from the list, but it does give me an idea what I should be looking for or expecting for the money I am willing to spend. It's just my guide, it's not my Holy Book.

 

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/alist/

Edited January 11, 2009 by corydoras

[chesters1]

Sorry SW. Grannie, eggs sucking...

PC World is one of these places that I try to avoid if I can, followed closely by Maplin. I'll use them if it's a Sunday afternoon or any other time when I need something NOW, otherwise I buy all my kit from the net. My last IT purchase was my printer, a Canon PIXMA iP500. I love it. I've printed loads with it and it has hardly used any ink. I bought that from Amazon.

avoid dabs as well not only do their descriptions, manufacturer's ID (and often pictures) not represent the item their selling trying to get a tech reply on an item (to be sure the description is correct for the item) took a month

bought 3 things from them two went back because they were not the correct ones

 

I.E a motherboard was infact a "lite" version of the one they were supposed to be selling ,pic ,man ID and description matched the "full" board not the one i got

and

a graphics card was the same and in this case they deliberately altered the description after i complained luckily i kept the original page on paper after the mobo incident ,a copy of it had an RMA next email after quibbling for days

Edited January 12, 2009 by chesters1

[corydoras]

avoid dabs as well not only do their descriptions, manufacturer's ID (and often pictures) not represent the item their selling trying to get a tech reply on an item (to be sure the description is correct for the item) took a month

bought 3 things from them two went back because they were not the correct ones

 

I.E a motherboard was infact a "lite" version of the one they were supposed to be selling ,pic ,man ID and description matched the "full" board not the one i got

and

a graphics card was the same and in this case they deliberately altered the description after i complained luckily i kept the original page on paper after the mobo incident ,a copy of it had an RMA next email after quibbling for days

Yup dabs too best avoided nowadays. Which is a shame because in the bad old days when dabs.com was not much more than an on-line spread sheet, it was a good site. 8 or 9 years ago they even had techies with product knowledge that you could email queries to and one could expect to get a sensible reply from them within a reasonable time frame. I think dabs.com big slide downhill began when David Atherton sold dabs.com to BT in 2006, in the 4 years around 1998-2002 I used Dabs a lot and never had to send I item back, and they were cheap too.