I recently came across a thread on a random forum where it called out to the members to post a screenshot of their desktop to show off their wallpaper graphics.

What was interesting wasn’t the graphics per sé but rather the screen resolution for most of the screen shots shown, which happened to be 1024×768. It showed up so much that a few commented on it saying something to the effect of, "Why are all you people using such low resolutions?"

Want to know the real kicker? These people posting screen shots were all in their late teens, 20s and 30s. This was not 40+ territory whatsoever.

So why is it that so many people still use 1024×768?

There’s actually a few good answers.

If you’re on a netbook, the vast majority of them have screens that are a native resolution of 1024×576 or 1024×600.

A teen may be using his parent’s computer where the parent prefers the resolution at something he or she can read, and that’s usually 1024×768.

The really interesting crowd are the twenty and thirty-somethings. I fall into this crowd because I’m 34. I wear eyeglasses, but my primary 20-inch monitor is 1680×1050 and the secondary 1280×1024. What’s the deal with 1024×768 in this age group?

The answer is something you probably didn’t think of: Games.

Games run much better and faster at lower resolutions. And if you keep your Windows resolution as 1024×768, when the switch to the game happens your icons don’t get all messed up and moved around. This is common in XP when you have your Windows resolution set different than your game resolution.

In addition, not all computer gamers run the newest blazing fast PC hardware. Many run decidedly old stuff and couldn’t care less about things like anisotropic filtering as long as the game plays smooth and fast. To get any advantage in speed and smoothness possible, the resolution is lowered on purpose even if the eyesight is just fine.

If you thought 1024×768 was only for the 40+ crowd, think again. There are plenty, and I mean plenty of younger users rockin’ the 1024 resolution for daily use.

What’s your res?

Write a comment and let people know. Include the resolution and your monitor’s physical size (ex: 17-inch, 19-inch, 20-inch, etc.)

LCD monitors are great. No question. They’re thin, can be moved around easily, don’t use much electricity, don’t produce static when turned on or off, have a crisp picture that stays crisp, and so on.

However there is one failing of LCD monitors and a big one at that. It’s a lack of vertical resolution.

I’ll explain.

Let’s say you want a monitor that has a 2048-pixel-wide resolution. Yes, this is an insane amount of pixels. How big, as in physically big, do you have to go with an LCD to get this?

The answer is 21 inches.

However, at that size you only get 1152 pixels on the vertical within a reasonable price range – and those are 23-inchers. The monitor is really wide, but seriously short. Bear in mind that is only 72 pixels taller than a 1680×1050 resolution. Like I said, short.

Now let’s say you want something with some true vertical resolution, as in 2048×1536. That’s proper.

That will cost you $4,400 to get it with LCD. You literally pay an extra four thousand dollars for those extra 384 vertical pixels.

Now let’s compare this to the good ol’ CRT – which is really hard to come by these days.

You can get a 21-inch monitor that will support a true 2048×1536 resolution. I found one on eBay for just $600. It’s used because I could not locate a new one.

(Note: If you know of any vendor that does sell these new, please feel free to post a comment with a link as I’m sure there would be some interested parties.)

Who needs crazy resolutions like this?

Programmers love having this kind of screen real estate. You can fit so much stuff on-screen that there is no need for a secondary monitor.

If you’re wondering, "How could anyone read anything at that resolution?" Trust me, programmers can and do routinely.

You simply cannot get the vertical resolution of those old huge 21 and 22-inch CRTs on modern LCDs. Not without paying several thousand dollars for it, anyway.

To answer the question: Did we lose resolution with LCD? Unquestionably, yes.

Hopefully someday the LCD monitor manufacturers will wise up and give us some decent vertical resolution at an agreeable price.

And no, buying an LCD that turns sideways is not the answer because then you lose a ton of horizontal real estate. What the monitor manufacturers need to do is start making taller monitors and not wider. We’ve got enough wide to go around already and don’t need any more. We need height.

For those that would say, "Well, just get a 2560×1600 LCD! Problem solved!" No, problem not solved. The monitor is physically too large. You’re going to have a 26 or 30-inch behemoth on the desk. That’s not practical at all. Maybe fun and cool, but not practical.

Wide is great, but don’t you wish sometimes you had an extra 300 or so pixels at the bottom? I know I do.

Real-world monitor resolution considerations for those of us on a budget

The two best resolutions that give you the most usable vertical space within a reasonable price are:

• 1680×1050
• 1280×1024

Why is vertical resolution so important? Because you scroll less.

My advice: Don’t buy anything under 1000 pixels on the vertical. Not unless you like scrolling a lot.

In the beginning (more or less)..

..there was 320×200 resolution with the Commodore 64.

Then came MS-DOS and VGA with 640×480 resolution. It was good and there was much rejoicing. Then came Super VGA (800×600). And it was better. And there was more rejoicing.

Fast-forward to present. You can now easily acquire LCD monitors with very high native resolutions. The big-big ones have 2560×1600.

But the people aren’t rejoicing anymore.

Is there such a thing as too much resolution? Yes. And it matters, because for many, anything over 1280×1024 is just too much, mainly due to the fact there’s much squinting involved when running native.

You may have noticed over the past few years that OEMs and monitor makers are purposely downing the native resolution on LCD monitors. This is because too many people were complaining that they couldn’t even read the text under their icons on the desktop without upping the font sizes at least 4 to 6 points (which is a lot).

Some would say, "So increase the font size.. what’s the problem?" The problem is that applications "expect" you to run native font size choices, and when you increase that size, menus look a bit off, scrollbars (the bad kind) happen and so on.

Running the native resolution on an LCD monitor with standard font sizes is obviously the best choice for the best picture and general use. With that said, here are my recommendations if you’re shopping around for monitors.

To note, "optimum" means "the res you can see and read stuff the best with".

Laptop 15-inch screen optimum resolution: 1280×800

The 1280×800 native res on a 15-inch widescreen laptop is "just right", so to speak. Both Linux and Windows look best with this res.

Note: Yes, you can read things easier with Ubuntu Linux compared to Windows XP. All fonts are larger, thicker and much easier to read.

Also note: Laptop LCD monitors are typically better than standalones. They are more crisp, clear and have far less tendency to "fuzz" things on-screen.

Standalone standard aspect 19-inch flat panel optimum resolution: 1280×1024

This resolution on a 19-inch standard aspect (meaning non-widescreen) makes reading everything very easy.

Standalone widescreen 22-inch flat panel optimum resolution: 1680×1050

You can "get away" with 1680×1050 on 20 and 21.5-inch monitors, but it definitely looks best on the 22.

Standalone widescreen 24-inch flat panel optimum resolution: 1920×1200

Make no mistake, a 24-inch monitor is frickin’ huge. And while it’s true you can get a lesser resolution of 1920×1080, the extra pixel height makes a (literally) big difference.

And believe it or not, one can be had for $260 new. It’s definitely not an expensive as it was a year ago.

What’s the best for those on a tight budget?

The standard aspect 19-inch at 1280×1024. This is the one I usually recommend. They sell for as little as $120 new.

What’s the best for those that can spend more?

The 24-inch widescreen. Bear in mind it’s big and requires space. Definitely not for small desks. And if you have one of those hutch-style things, it may be too tall to fit. If this may present itself to be an issue, shop for one that specifically has a height-adjustable base because it will be required.

The human eye can see around 7 million colors. And that’s a rough best-guess number because no one truly knows the exact amount.

Your immediate thought might be, "But my monitor is rated to display 16.7 million colors (like this one). That’s more than double what my eye can see. Isn’t it physically impossible for the human eye to see them all?"

Yes and no.

It is not possible for your eye to see all 16.7 million colors at once.

It is possible for your computer monitor to be able to display more hues that your eye can see.

So yes, you can see them all (as far as we know). Just not all at once.

In plain English:

Your monitor renders color from what it’s capable of displaying. Those extra millions of colors allow it to have more hues to choose from. This in turn usually makes for more photorealistic/natural looking images.

A simple example:

If you look at an image of an apple on a computer monitor, the apple is red. But it’s obviously not one shade of red. It’s many shades.

If the monitor were only capable of 100 shades of red, the apple does not look realistic. Some parts of the apple will look a bit "cartoony" to the eye.

However when the monitor is capable of 5000 shades of red, this changes everything for the better. The monitor has more choice of what hues of red to use for its final rendered image. It can pick colors of red from anywhere within that 5000 instead of 100 – and more of them.

And of those 5000 shades of red, the monitor is not using all of them. Maybe it’s only using 750. Maybe less. Maybe more. It will use whatever is available to it to deliver an accurate representation of what it’s trying to display.

So in a nutshell: Your eye can’t see 16.7 million colors at once, but it can differentiate hues. Having a computer monitor that can display more colors is better. And at no time is your monitor displaying all of them (that would end up showing nothing but a solid white screen). Your monitor is designed to display what is deemed "true color" to the eye. Those extra hues count.

More colors = more hues = more realistic imagery.

To note, truecolor can best be described as "mostly true" or "what people are willing to accept as realistic accurate color representation on a computer monitor".

Next month the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is coming. It’s a 17-inch screened, Intel Core 2 Quad’ed, 980GB hard drive’d beast.

But what makes it worth $3,600?

See that thing sticking out from the right?

You guessed it, that’s another screen. You may asking yourself “Is that a dual-screen laptop?” You are correct.

Also note the drawing tablet next to the trackpad. This sucker is loaded with goodies.

As far as the actual usefulness of a dual-monitor’d laptop.. well.. you be the judge. Useful or not?

If you’re like most computer users, you’re using an LCD monitor as your primary computer display. And you’ve probably adjusted your monitor settings as best you could, but it still doesn’t “look right”. Some hues appear too blue while others appear too red, or maybe the black looks like a dark gray at best. Continued

The Microsoft Windows operating environment introduced something called "font smoothing" right around the time Internet Explorer 4.0 was released in 1997. Even way back then (this is before the release of Windows 98) Microsoft understood that type on screen must be as legible as possible.

ClearType, another Microsoft way of making fonts look better, was announced in 1998 but didn’t make an appearance until January 2000 as a feature of the Microsoft Reader software for those that remember that title.

When Windows XP was introduced in 2001, ClearType was built-in.

All this font stuff is called subpixel rendering technology. In layman’s terms is just means the fonts you see on screen are rendered differently.

In Windows XP (and in Vista assumedly) you can enable or disable ClearType at whim. This is done via Control Panel / Display / Appearance / Effects button. You see this:

If you check "Use the following method…" and select "Standard" from the drop-down menu, fonts under the 12pt size will not show as ClearType. If you select "ClearType", all fonts are rendered in ClearType. If you uncheck the box, no fonts will be shown in ClearType at all.

I do recommend anyone running Windows XP to download and use the ClearType Tuner PowerToy. This will add an icon in your Control Panel called "ClearType Tuning". When you click it you see this:

Using the Wizard helps out a great deal in selecting how much ClearType rendering you want. Very handy to have.

Which is more readable, ClearType or Standard?

This obviously depends on a few factors:

LCD or CRT?

Subpixel rendering has heavy concentration to make fonts look good on an LCD monitor (note the screen shot above: "..improves the readability of text on existing LCDs"). More often than not if you’re using a CRT, turning ClearType off will look better.

Why is this? Because CRT monitors aren’t as crisp as LCDs are. If you have ClearType enabled on a CRT it may "fuzz out" the fonts too much causing them to look "smudgy".

Font size

Obviously larger fonts look better than smaller ones when talking about subpixel rendering. Think of it this way: With digital photography, larger resolution is always better. With smaller resolutions you lose focus. The same can be said for fonts.

LCD screen striping

If the smaller fonts on your screen have the tendency to have oddly-colored edges, sometimes something as simple as changing the LCD screen striping will fix this. The ClearType Tuning applet has an "Advanced" section where you can change it from red/green/blue to blue/green/red:

Note the left side of the screen shot above.

If when you change this it makes the fonts look bad, just change it back. It will not "mess up" your monitor whatsoever because it has nothing to do with screen resolution; just the font rendering method.

Standard resolution fonts do not have any issue whatsoever with display no matter what screen striping method you use.

Is the font "interrupted" by a background image?

This is particularly dealing with what wallpaper you use. Certain wallpaper will make the text under your icons difficult to read while others will not.

General rule of thumb: Darker-image wallpaper always make the icon text look better. And of course, using no wallpaper is the best for legibility – especially if the background color is black.

What’s your refresh rate?

The standard refresh rate for almost all LCD monitors is 60Hz. I made mention in the past that some offer the option of 59Hz. This may offer slightly better readability.

With CRT monitors, the default refresh rate is also 60Hz – but you may find better luck with 70, 72, 75 or 85 depending on the choices you have.

If no matter what you do for hertz on a CRT the fonts still look crappy, disable ClearType.

Screen hardware settings

This actually has nothing to do with the font itself but rather the physical monitor settings.

The ones to pay attention to are:

• Brightness
• Contrast
• Sharpness
• Color

Brightness and Contrast:

When your monitor is showing nothing but black, it should be as black as possible and not gray-ish. If the gray exists this will "fuzz" fonts a bit.

Sharpness:

Too much sharpness will cause odd colors to appear in font rendering.

Color:

You have "cool" and "warm" settings here. Generally speaking "cool" (blue-ish) is better read easier. HOWEVER – going to blue can be trying on the eyes by making the whites too stark. Adjust only in slight increments if you have the option.

For those with multi-monitor setups running Windows XP, you’ve probably run into the situation where whenever you launch a specific application it launches on the "wrong monitor". Sure, a reboot is a quick fix for this but you obviously don’t want to do this every time you want program windows to appear in their proper places.

Saving your last known window position is easy in XP if you do the following.

1. Launch the app. Yes, it will go to the "wrong monitor" as usual, but that’s okay.

2. Put the program into a "windowed" state (meaning not maximized).

3. Drag the window to the monitor where you want it to appear when launched.

4. Hold SHIFT and click the close button at the top right.

5. Re-launch the app. It should appear on the "correct" monitor this time.

Holding SHIFT and clicking the close button saves the window position of the app you just closed.

Why does this happen?

Here’s an example situation of what makes an app always launch on the "wrong monitor":

1. You launch an app and drag it to monitor 2.
2. You then launch a full-screen game that changes the resolution of both monitors.

When you launch that game, Windows resets all the current window positions to suit. If you have an app on monitor 2, Windows deems "Okay, this is where this app is supposed to be" and will re-launch it there each time you close and restart it until next boot.

To avoid this situation:

Minimize your open application windows before launching a full-screen game that changes resolution, or purposely run your game in the native resolution for monitor 1 (if the resolution isn’t reset, the window positions aren’t reset either).

Hardware recognition in Linux can come a long, long way. And unless you have a computer that has proprietary hardware (meaning "Windows only" supported), it’s a good bet that if you try out a Linux distribution, everything in your computer box will be supported without issue.

Something that’s always bothered me – as will as many other *nix users – is the lack of multi-monitor support. It’s a pain to set up and even more of a pain to use if you want to use multi-monitor and Compiz (3D effects) at the same time.

I’ll put it to you this way: Let’s say you’ve got a fresh copy of Ubuntu or Linux Mint installed. You installed the Restricted Drivers set to support your nVidia video card. Then you attempt to set up a dual-monitor setup Xinerama style (so both monitors act as one). Chances are you’re not going to get very far by doing it strictly from the GUI. So then you have to manually edit the xorg.conf file but then find out you can’t use Compiz at all whereas before you could.

Is there anything you can do? Yes. You can use Envy. In many distros of Linux Envy is easy to find, download, install and use. If you run a debian-specific distro like Ubuntu or Linux Mint you can acquire it via apt-get, add/remove or software portal (the portal is Mint specific).

Envy adds in a GUI control manager that makes multi-monitor easy to set up that actually works – and gives you Xinerama style – and the ability to get all those cool 3D effects with Compiz too.

Is Envy perfect?

No, far from it. I have 2 major gripes with Envy.

1. It doesn’t tell you when you need to restart X save for one time. What happens is that you’ll modify a setting, exit the control manager and expect it to work. But it doesn’t – not until after a restart of X. I figured this out the hard way.
2. On some distros it will not ask for permission to write to the xorg.conf file. Fortunately you can copy/paste modifications in there, but still you have to know how to do that (i.e. sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, copy/paste/save, etc. etc.)

Even with these gripes, it’s still better than nothing. And even though I wasn’t completely able to escape the command line for the xorg.conf edit, it was darn close.

Soon enough I will be posting a video showing off what Envy can do now. It’s been a while since I used it last and it’s improved quite a bit (even with the gripes I have above).

So if you’re looking for a multi-monitor solution with Linux but can’t seem to get it to work, give Envy a try – it may work for you.

It’s a safe assumption that the vast majority of computer users today use LCD monitors. It is in fact a very reliable technology and it’s not often that you hear of one breaking. But being that it’s an electronic device, yes it will eventually fail.

How long does it take before an LCD fails completely?

Usually about 5 to 7 years.

What is the first thing to "go" on an LCD monitor?

With a free-standing LCD (i.e. one attached to regular desktop computer), the backlight is usually the first thing to break. With a laptop a whole host of other things can go awry. More on that in a moment. When a backlight fails, the picture will get extremely dim. It will still work but be almost unreadable.

Is it worth it to repair an LCD monitor?

Never. The cost of repairing an LCD monitor will usually cost more than replacing it outright.

Common issues with LCD monitors

Solid horizontal and/or vertical lines

One day you will turn on the monitor and these brightly colored lines will appear with no way to get rid of them. This is a hardware fault and there is no fix for this. Replace the monitor.

Monitor takes a while to "warm up" after starting it

You turn the monitor on and it takes a minute or two to reach full brightness. This is a backlight issue. You can still use the monitor normally until the backlight breaks (which it will eventually).

Monitor flickers on and off randomly

This is laptop-specific. The LCD ribbon connector cable is damaged from normal use of opening and closing the lid over time. This can be repaired. The monitor does not need replacement, but the ribbon connector cable does.

If you’re brave enough you can order this part from the OEM manufacturer and replace it yourself. It it normally located under the left-side hinge. It is not easy, but certainly cheaper than replacing the entire display.

Suggested course of action is to locate an authorized computer repair center and have them replace the ribbon connector. It will cost anywhere from $60 to $150, labor included. This may sound expensive but it’s still cheaper than replacing the monitor itself which will cost a whole lot more.

Corners or one side of monitor appears dimmer than the other

Again this is a backlight issue. There is no fix. Deal with it or replace the monitor.

Everything "goes green" or "goes pink" or "goes red"

For laptops, again this is the ribbon connector cable. Replace it. For desktops, replace the monitor cable which may or may not fix the problem.

"Wild patterns" appear for no reason

It will look something like this:

No fix for this. Monitor is busted. Replace it.