help with monitor/display

March 8, 2007 2:11 PM

Samsung 740N TFT 17 inch monitor - ibook G4

I just bought a monitor that claimed to be mac compatable. I've plugged it in and the colors are weird and the fonts are alternately jagged and fuzzy. I've played around with font smoothing, calibration, sharpness, etc but it still looks terrible. Any help would be much much appreciated!

Samsung 740N TFT 17 inch monitor - ibook G4

posted by cg2 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

The iBook G4 can't change its resolution to fit the screen better, it can only output 1024 by 768. As far as I know, that's the only way it can look--I had the same problem with my iBook G4.
posted by tjenks at 2:17 PM on March 8, 2007

LCDs need to be run at their native resolution to look their best; on your monitor that would be 1280x1024, which your G4 can't do. I'd return it and get one that matches your display resolution.
posted by bizwank at 2:26 PM on March 8, 2007

The iBook G4 can't change its resolution to fit the screen better, it can only output 1024 by 768. As far as I know, that's the only way it can look--I had the same problem with my iBook G4.

This is only true, as long as you don't install screen spanning doctor, which enables more resolutions as well as screen spanning. (and clamshell mode but I found that really unreliable.) It looks like that monitor really needs 1024x1280 resolution, so this is probably the problem.
posted by advil at 2:29 PM on March 8, 2007

er...1280x1024
posted by advil at 2:35 PM on March 8, 2007

This happened on my G5 iMac last year. It only did mirroring until I installed that screen spanning doctor app mentioned in the previous comment.

Install that, then you should have added resolution options in your display prefs.
posted by mathowie at 2:51 PM on March 8, 2007