Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
One of my much-loved Samsung 21 inch screens is dying. Now you might think that 21 inches isn't very special, but these are real 21 inch screens - 4:3 aspect ratio, 1200 pixels high: better resolution than any Full HD / 1080p monitor ever made (1200px makes a significantly more detailed picture than 1080). And they are big: don't be misled by the 21 inch diagonal; because of the 4:3 aspect ratio the picture is 330 mm high. For comparison, the 25 inch "wide screen" monitor on my seldom-used spare computer is 300mm high.
Trouble is, no-one makes big 4:3 screens anymore. All iPads have 4:3 screens, there is a growing trend for better-quality Android tablets to have them too, and you can readily buy 4:3 screens in smaller sizes for business and point of sale tasks, but no bigger than 19 inches. I have no doubt that you will be able to get 4:3 photographic size screens as big as my wonderful old Samsungs or bigger sometime in the next few years - the trend has started - but you can't buy them today. (Actually, there is a firm that makes horrendously overpriced 4:3 screens for specialised medical and industrial use - we needn't go there; it's the sort of money you'd spend to buy a car.)
Now I'll see about getting the Samsung repaired, of course. It will be the power supply again. I've had both of them repaired before: the power supplies seem to fail every five years or so, and always at the start of winter when the room temperature drops below 10 degrees. It will cost maybe $300 to fix, which is well worth it. (New, these screens were $1400 or so, which was real money in those days.)
Nevertheless, I am going to buy a new screen in the next couple of days, and when the Samsung comes back it can either be a second screen on this system or replace one of the cheap, generic screens on the spare system.
I'm thinking 27 to 32 inches, maybe more, certainly not less, and vertical resolution must be better than the 1200 I have now - i.e., 1440 or higher: I'm not sure how practical the really high resolutions are, never tried one. In any case, I might run into problems with display drivers for them - I'm running these off a laptop with docking station and I am certainly not going to blow two or three grand on a new Thinkpad when this T530 is running so beautifully and has years of useful life left in it. (Horizontal resolution doesn't matter within reason, it's the vertical that usually restricts you.)
(By the way, we juiced the T530 up a bit the other day with a 500GB micro-SATA SSD boot drive (Samsung) and two Seagate hybrid data drives, 1TB internally and 2TB in the DVD slot. Goes like a rocket!)
This Dell looks like the sort of thing I'd like- http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=au&cs=aubsd1&l=en&sku=210-41434 - but at $2050 it's hellishly expensive. It has a 16:10 ratio (not 4:3 but noticeably better than the common 16:9), IPS (of course), has both Display Port and DVI inputs (DVI is the most convenient, but has max resolution limitations which might trip me up; if so, the Thinkpad has built-in Display Port which would be OK too - yes, you can get converter cables and so on, but I never really trust them, seen too many problems before.) It is reasonably energy efficient (not great but not bad) and of course it has good colour balance ex-factory. (I have a Spyder hardware colour calibration device but the better a screen's colour is in the first place, the easier life is.)
This 32 inch Samsung looks nice at around $1900 http://www.samsung.com/au/consumer/monitor-printer/monitor/uhd-monitor/LU32D97KQSN/XY# but it's a lot of money.
At about $1000 there is this Viewsonic: http://www.viewsonic.com.au/products/lcd/VP2770-LED.php#pSpecs
HP have this one at around $800 http://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=M1P04AA&opt=&sel=MTO and about six different high-spec models in the $2000 to $3000 range.
Of them all, I think I like the Dell best at this stage, but surely I can spend a good bit less than that and get something pretty decent. Ideas and experiences please good SP people.
Trouble is, no-one makes big 4:3 screens anymore. All iPads have 4:3 screens, there is a growing trend for better-quality Android tablets to have them too, and you can readily buy 4:3 screens in smaller sizes for business and point of sale tasks, but no bigger than 19 inches. I have no doubt that you will be able to get 4:3 photographic size screens as big as my wonderful old Samsungs or bigger sometime in the next few years - the trend has started - but you can't buy them today. (Actually, there is a firm that makes horrendously overpriced 4:3 screens for specialised medical and industrial use - we needn't go there; it's the sort of money you'd spend to buy a car.)
Now I'll see about getting the Samsung repaired, of course. It will be the power supply again. I've had both of them repaired before: the power supplies seem to fail every five years or so, and always at the start of winter when the room temperature drops below 10 degrees. It will cost maybe $300 to fix, which is well worth it. (New, these screens were $1400 or so, which was real money in those days.)
Nevertheless, I am going to buy a new screen in the next couple of days, and when the Samsung comes back it can either be a second screen on this system or replace one of the cheap, generic screens on the spare system.
I'm thinking 27 to 32 inches, maybe more, certainly not less, and vertical resolution must be better than the 1200 I have now - i.e., 1440 or higher: I'm not sure how practical the really high resolutions are, never tried one. In any case, I might run into problems with display drivers for them - I'm running these off a laptop with docking station and I am certainly not going to blow two or three grand on a new Thinkpad when this T530 is running so beautifully and has years of useful life left in it. (Horizontal resolution doesn't matter within reason, it's the vertical that usually restricts you.)
(By the way, we juiced the T530 up a bit the other day with a 500GB micro-SATA SSD boot drive (Samsung) and two Seagate hybrid data drives, 1TB internally and 2TB in the DVD slot. Goes like a rocket!)
This Dell looks like the sort of thing I'd like- http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=au&cs=aubsd1&l=en&sku=210-41434 - but at $2050 it's hellishly expensive. It has a 16:10 ratio (not 4:3 but noticeably better than the common 16:9), IPS (of course), has both Display Port and DVI inputs (DVI is the most convenient, but has max resolution limitations which might trip me up; if so, the Thinkpad has built-in Display Port which would be OK too - yes, you can get converter cables and so on, but I never really trust them, seen too many problems before.) It is reasonably energy efficient (not great but not bad) and of course it has good colour balance ex-factory. (I have a Spyder hardware colour calibration device but the better a screen's colour is in the first place, the easier life is.)
This 32 inch Samsung looks nice at around $1900 http://www.samsung.com/au/consumer/monitor-printer/monitor/uhd-monitor/LU32D97KQSN/XY# but it's a lot of money.
At about $1000 there is this Viewsonic: http://www.viewsonic.com.au/products/lcd/VP2770-LED.php#pSpecs
HP have this one at around $800 http://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=M1P04AA&opt=&sel=MTO and about six different high-spec models in the $2000 to $3000 range.
Of them all, I think I like the Dell best at this stage, but surely I can spend a good bit less than that and get something pretty decent. Ideas and experiences please good SP people.
Maybe tomorrow. Tea's apple crumbles are worth waiting for. She uses a unique recipe: apples, pears, chopped lemon or lime, a little other fruit as it comes to hand and seems like a good ideas at the time, rolled oats on top, very hot oven. No spices, no sugar, absolutely nothing except beautiful fresh fruit. She says the secret is the quality of the fruit. Mostly, it's out of our own gardens.
