I looking to upgrade my monitor from 17 inches to something bigger. What's the best size to get a 1:1 ratio for 8x11 paper? I would like to do some amateur print design.

You don't necessarily need anything bigger if you buy a monitor that can swivel into portrait mode, assuming your PC/Graphics card will support that.

Yeah but wide screens are all the rage now. If possible I would like something that will allow 2 pages viewed side by side. Good for video viewing as well.

Hah. Not so much "what do I need" as "provide an excuse to get something I want", eh?

Take that as gentle joshing. I appreciate the potential of widescreen for two side-by side documents, but my (4:3) monitor is too young to require replacement with any financial common sense.....

Anyway, without any practical experience, but with application of maths, you need at least 23" at 16:9. I'll leave "best" to someone else.

This is a replacement for my 5 year old lcd that cost 100 more then current 22" lcd prices. So money has nothing to do with. I mean I not gonna buy anything over $300 dollars. I jsut wanna what's the best balence to help with my everyday needs and my new found lust for print and web design.

Maybe I should have said reasonable?

16:9? I was thinking of the 24" acer nice price drop on that.

Thanks

My 24" at work is very good for viewing 2 a4 sheets side by side in portrait. The 22" I have at home is pretty much exactly the size of 2 a4 sheets, but so perfectly that it doesnt have space for toolbars too at 1:1.
nice monitor tho, and has plenty of space for working on most things...

All widescreen monitors are the same ratio, so when it comes to working with a 8x11 document, you don't get a choice. The only question is size and resolution. Note that a bigger screen size does not necessarily mean higher resolution. So check the numbers before you buy.

I highly recommend getting a monitor that can be used in portrait mode. Landscape is a ratio most suitably used for movies and games. Portrait is much better for viewing documents, writing code, browsing the web. Note that the ability to use portrait mode may depend on your video card.

I have a 20" at work and 22" at home. My home one is higher resolution and I appreciate the extra space that offers.

well I see everyone is recommending portrait mode. My video card is old but it supports it with the right software. I think I can mount a monitor on the wall and get a mounting attactment that can turn between the two modes. That would work out best. I wonder though why most computer monitor are not 120mhz refresh like most tv lcd now. I guess you don't need it but it just seem like an easy addition.

Mine does both portrait and landscape, but I generally find myself keeping it in landscape. Kinda depends what your working on...

Simarilius wrote:Mine does both portrait and landscape, but I generally find myself keeping it in landscape. Kinda depends what your working on...

Yeah, I should say, portrait as an option is great. I wouldn't necessarily recommend a portrait only monitor

BlackInk wrote:I wonder though why most computer monitor are not 120mhz refresh like most tv lcd now.

I think 120Hz is just a badge--something you can say your TV does that others don't. I'm not convinced of its benefits. Frequency was a big deal with CRTs because a low frequency caused a visible flicker that could cause serious eye-strain.

... I was meant to finish off my previous post by saying: LCD screens don't have a flicker so even a 60Hz monitor looks smooth. In the past the biggest issue for LCD's was response time. I personally don't understand if there is a truly visible benefit to higher frequency monitors. Certainly for desktop use it insignificant, it could only make a difference when watching video or playing games (playing games mostly since video is already limited to 30 frames per second).

nice deviantart page

When you mostly work on documents like US letter format or A4 size, I recommend portrait as well. It gives a much more efficient use of the "real estate".

My main work is writing software and maintaining user's manuals and I have a fixed setup with two 20" (4x3) TFT's, (Acer AL2021) both in portrait mode, both running 1200 x 1600. The actual screen size is 30.5 x 41 cm, which is bigger than A3 size paper. These screens don't support swivel, so I placed them on a new "pedestal" to get them in portrait mode.

microUgly wrote:[...]

I highly recommend getting a monitor that can be used in portrait mode. Landscape is a ratio most suitably used for movies and games. Portrait is much better for viewing documents, writing code, browsing the web. [...]

In the mean time, multipane-UIs, which are common in the editing and browsing area, make it sometime wrong. Landscape is nice with multi-pane editors or two pane browsers (like Opera and its left pan).

>All widescreen monitors are the same ratio[...]

There is 16:9, 16:10, 5:3, and a few bastardizations thereof.

Seems this topic will not die. That's good. Nice to see this one has some legs on it.
hmmm interesting uses for portrait.

microUgly wrote:I highly recommend getting a monitor that can be used in portrait mode. Landscape is a ratio most suitably used for movies and games. Portrait is much better for viewing documents, writing code, browsing the web. Note that the ability to use portrait mode may depend on your video card.

I made this claim without actually using a monitor in portrait orientation. I just bought a stand for my work monitor so I can rotate it. I stand by the claim that it's better for viewing documents. But there is one major issue. The viewing angle of an LCD is measured from left to right, not up and down. When you turn an LCD on it's side it's viewing angle goes to crap. It's not so bad it's unusable, but the subtle angle between each of your eyes is enough to that they see two very different shades of colour on the monitor, making it look shiny. I'm thinking it's going to give me a headache.

The other issue is that my monitor is 1440x900 or 900x1440 (20"). 900 pixels is perhaps a little too narrow for most applications.

A 24 inch (61 cm) monitor came with my desk top. It was the display model in Costco. I knew it had only been there for a couple of months and it was selling at a deep discount. I've had it for 4 months now no problems so far. It's so big I had to get a bigger table to put it on. If I sit closer than 3 feet I have to keep turning my head back and forth to see both sides of the display. The stand it's on lets you rotate it but I have bother to figure out how to get the display mode to portrait.

EarlyBlake wrote:The stand it's on lets you rotate it but I have bother to figure out how to get the display mode to portrait.

If you have an NVidia video card, select your monitor in display properties -> settings, click on Advanced Settings, select the Geforce tab then click Start Nvidia Control Panel. You'll see the rotate option in there.

microUgly wrote:

EarlyBlake wrote:The stand it's on lets you rotate it but I have bother to figure out how to get the display mode to portrait.

If you have an NVidia video card, select your monitor in display properties -> settings, click on Advanced Settings, select the Geforce tab then click Start Nvidia Control Panel. You'll see the rotate option in there.

Thanks tried it. I could not even see the top of the monitor. I'd have to sit 5 feet way and have 20/10 vision to use it that way. Now I know 16 x 9 aspect ratio isn't meant for portrait viewing

microUgly wrote:But there is one major issue. The viewing angle of an LCD is measured from left to right, not up and down. When you turn an LCD on it's side it's viewing angle goes to crap. It's not so bad it's unusable, but the subtle angle between each of your eyes is enough to that they see two very different shades of colour on the monitor, making it look shiny. I'm thinking it's going to give me a headache.

When I got my two monitors (Acer AL2021, 4x3, 20", 1600x1200), the viewing angles were one of the most important specs we looked at. The monitors were meant to be used in a two monitor setup, initially in landscape setting. That gives a pretty wide and pretty high display, so the viewing angle had to be good. The monitors were tested before actually bought, both by me and my colleague, who got two of them too. The specs state a viewing angle of 178 degrees , both horizontally and vertically. Later, I discovered the rotating feature in my display driver and tested it. I'm really happy with it and won't go back.

microUgly wrote:The other issue is that my monitor is 1440x900 or 900x1440 (20"). 900 pixels is perhaps a little too narrow for most applications.

Since the ones I have are 4:3 ratio, I dont' have this issue, they have a resolution of 1200 x 1600 now.


I do have another (small) issue: Windows XP has a nice feature, which they call "Clear Type", which basically is Sub pixel anti aliasing font rendering. Don't use it when you have your monitors in portrait setup, it then works counter productive. The sub pixels should be addressed differently in portrait mode, but XP doesn't do that, giving an ugly result.

any any one have any feelins on the 1080p monitors that are popping up? i think that going to be the standard now?

ErikTiePie wrote:The specs state a viewing angle of 178 degrees , both horizontally and vertically.

I wasn't sure monitor specs would report a vertical viewing angle, so thanks for pointing it out. If I buy another monitor for home I'll defintely be checking that value.

ErikTiePie wrote:I do have another (small) issue: Windows XP has a nice feature, which they call "Clear Type", which basically is Sub pixel anti aliasing font rendering. Don't use it when you have your monitors in portrait setup, it then works counter productive. The sub pixels should be addressed differently in portrait mode, but XP doesn't do that, giving an ugly result.

I had noticed this also originally. It was bad enough that I turned it off completely (pity you can't turn it off for one monitor), but some applications have a cleartype effect built in (i.e. Pidgin) and it was almost unbearable. But I upgraded my NVidia drivers and it made a really big difference--enabling cleartype now is not such a problem. It's still not as sharp as normal (perhaps because it's VGA, not DVI), but good enough to keep enabled.

I also found that my monitor has an auto-function that shifts the pixels on the screen to make sure it's pixel perfect. This had an awful effect when executed when the monitor was rotated that could not be manually corrected. I had to revert the orientation of the monitor and execute the Auto function before rotating it back again.

BlackInk wrote:any any one have any feelins on the 1080p monitors that are popping up? i think that going to be the standard now?

I'm not so sure. Big resolution normally means big monitor, and most people don't need or want a big monitor. They could compact that resolution into a smaller monitor, but that will require you modifying the OS's DPI setting so text and graphics don't become unbearably small. I'm all for this, but so much software is build on top of the theory that all monitors are 72 or 96 dpi. When you bump the DPI up to 120 90% of stuff looks great whilst the rest goes to crap. Web pages are best example where an increase in DPI makes fonts larger, but the images remain small, causing the layout of many sites to break. Although, browsers like Opera can work around these issues by scaling the entire page.

BlackInk wrote:any any one have any feelins on the 1080p monitors that are popping up? i think that going to be the standard now?

That is also the size of the new high definition TVs isn't?

EarlyBlake wrote:

BlackInk wrote:any any one have any feelins on the 1080p monitors that are popping up? i think that going to be the standard now?

That is also the size of the new high definition TVs isn't?

Yeah, that's what they call Full HD, and is the resolution of Bluray movies.

microUgly wrote:Big resolution normally means big monitor

I'm wrong. I just seen a Samsung 1080p monitor that's 22". I thought 1080p would start at 26" or more. I would be keen see what a desktop looks like at that res.

ErikTiePie wrote:The specs state a viewing angle of 178 degrees

I just checked mine and it's 160 horizontal and vertical, but I guess that's a the point at which you can't see the picture anymore, not the point where colours start to differ for each of the viewers eyes. I guess that'll mean I'll have to see a monitor in the flesh before purchasing.