22" or 24" monitor for clearer picture?
December 16, 2010 1:19 PM   Subscribe

I'm getting my mother a new monitor for Christmas to replace her 17inch CRT, which she runs at 800x600 because she finds it easier to read. Would the larger pixels of a 24" monitor make it a better replacement than a 22" or would the overall size be disorienting?

Obviously the pixel size is going to be smaller than she's used to whatever I do, but I'm hoping that the higher image quality of an LCD will help to make up for the overall screen size being smaller. We can also fiddle with the font size settings in Windows XP which should help. Any advice much appreciated especially if you've dealt with a similar situation.
posted by tomcooke to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)
 
Best answer: Font size settings are generally useless because they mostly affect menu and icon text, not the important stuff like webpage and email content. Teach her how to use CTRL and the scroll wheel to get text to a comfortable size.

Chances are she won't be able to use the native resolution of the monitor anyway, but the bigger the pixel the better.

Make sure her video driver/card support widescreen resolutions. If it's an older computer it's more likely that this isn't the case.
posted by ODiV at 1:23 PM on December 16, 2010


Best answer: You could still run it at 800x600 on a 22" or 24", but it won't be in a native resolution, and possibly blurry (but not necessarily so). I would try it in a store and see how it looks on the monitor you're considering.

Assuming you can and do run it in 800x600, everything will of course be larger on the larger monitor.

Also, you may be able to run at 1024x768 or even higher on the larger monitors, and icons and fonts will still be a similar physical size as on the old monitor.
posted by eas98 at 1:36 PM on December 16, 2010


Seconding the "check on what her computer can drive in terms of resolution".

I bought a whizz-bang screen a while back with the intention of using it on a particular computer I own only to find it couldn't be driven by the video card of the computer.
posted by southof40 at 1:50 PM on December 16, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers. She is planning on getting a new computer this year, but after thinking about the responses above I'm thinking that 1680x1050 on a 22" would probably make more sense than full HD. Any recommendations?
posted by tomcooke at 2:15 PM on December 16, 2010


You can still change the font and text size settings on windows 7 because that will atleast help her on reading the icons and things when looking for a program to load.
posted by majortom1981 at 2:40 PM on December 16, 2010


This may seem bizarre, but get a widescreen monitor that can be turned to portrait mode. Then bump up the DPI (Large Fonts). Very readable, and much more natural.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:55 PM on December 16, 2010


Best answer: Having switched some users at work from 800x600 on 17" monitors to 22", the most common resolution they wind up feeling comfortable with is 1024x768 even though the ratio's off. It's possible that 1440x900 would be workable on a 24" for her. Try a few different resolutions out at the store.
posted by ODiV at 2:56 PM on December 16, 2010


1920x1080 at 28" is a decent choice. Or find a 21" 4:3 1600x1200 and run it a 800x600 which would maintain a crisp picture.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:21 PM on December 17, 2010


Response by poster: Went for 1680x1050 on a 22" screen (NEC AS221WM) which she has been happy with so far. No trouble running this at native resolution on her 8 year old PC although I did have to upgrade to the latest NVIDIA drivers.

Thanks for all the answers!
posted by tomcooke at 12:06 AM on January 17, 2011


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