I think I’ve mentioned that my computer was stolen awhile back. I’m just about done getting everything sorta back to where it was.
I’ve been borrowing my sister’s monitor, a 17″ 1280 x 1024 flat screen. My original plan was to go with another of the same, but amazingly, those monitors are dying out. For only a little bit more, I could get a 19″ wide screen, at 1440 x 900.
Problem:
1280 x 1024 = 1.4 MPx
1440 x 900 = 1.3 MPx
a net loss in real estate for a noticeable bump in price.
Instead, I waited for a nice 20″ to go on sale, and ended up with a LG/Flatron W2052TQ. The W52TQ line was LG’s “Flagship” on release, but today Fry’s had it on sale for $240. Total real estate:
1680 x 1050 = 1.8 MPx
This is so much extra room I’m actually having a little trouble adjusting to it, but in general, I like being able to have a standard browser window open, and another few inches of space on the side for helper apps, like the calculator, notepad, terminal, and so forth. The GIMP likes the extra space too, of course, given its little flock of windows.
Color, brightness, sharpness, and so forth are all fine. I am not a graphics person, so I can’t speak to color balance and the like, but it all looks good.
A few minor installation/useability issues:
- Putting the pedestal together was a bit of a puzzle. There are three separate pieces, the base itself and a couple of smaller bits that reinforce it, but unfortunately the instruction flyer in the box does not include an assembly diagram, and I spent several very confused minutes until I realized I was missing a crucial piece, buried in the packaging. Yes, there’s an assembly diagram in the PDF manual on the CD, but you know, it’s hard to read when the monitor is laying face down in your lap.
- Also, the front panel controls are very unobtrusive buttons (as in, on the bottom edge, not the front panel itself), and the labels for these buttons are very faint white markings on a silver bezel, basically invisible. Guys, you’re willing to clutter up the frame with advertising medallions, which, since I already bought the damn thing, do me no good at all, but you hide the buttons I actually need. Gah. (And one of those stickers advertises the FUN feature, which is activated by its own special invisible button. Insult to injury, all that.)
- For security, I’ve been thinking about getting a monitor arm that would bolt to the wall. Unfortunately, looks like this monitor doesn’t accept the standard VESA FDMI mounting plate. The pedestal mount has holes laid out as 400mm x 700mm; the nearest VESA pattern is 400 x 600.
- If you are using the analog video connector, the thumbscrews are awkwardly placed. It’s difficult to tighten them by hand, and the base interferes with a screwdriver.
My old video card was a nVidea 400MX. Worked reasonably well for my simple needs, but I found the binary LINUX drivers provided by nV were unstable. The open source driver for UBUNTU wasn’t much better, but it would run for hours before scrambling the screen, while the binary driver would lock up in just a few minutes.
When researching the widescreen monitor, I found that the 400MX could not handle the 1680 x 1050 resolution, and so I picked up a new video card as well.
I had very, very few choices: my current motherboard (an ABIT NF8-V2) is AGP, and just about every card on the market these days is PCI-Express. I finally found a PNY GeForce 2600-256, which uses the nVidia chipset, for $60. I’m pretty sure GeF 2600 cards were going for in excess of a $200 on release; procrastination has its rewards. A quick forum check turned up no angry rants about this card under Linux. Fine.
After getting Fry’s to remove an unwanted $43 “installation” fee, which somehow snuck onto the invoice, I brought everything home.
The monitor turned out to work fine on my old card, which now displayed the wide screen resolution.*SIGH* I very nearly returned the card, but decided to keep it.
Installation was quick, the driver installed itself automatically, and it looks fine. I’m not doing any gaming, but ordinary window-handling seems to be happening much more smoothly than before. We’ll see about stability over the next few days.
All in all, I’m pretty happy. Now I have to think about putting a secondary system together in case I get burgled again. I’d also like to put it a closet and use it to store surveillance video. You can take the desktop system, and but still leave my personal and work files here, along with pictures of your ugly goblin mug.
This time, though, I think I’m ready: everything I own worth stealing is prominently defaced with the phrase “Stolen from KE5IKY”, my ham call sign. I’m hoping that will drop the resale value to “not worth the trouble”. I’ve also finally forced myself to keep an off-site database of all my steal-able goods, with manufacturer, model number, serial number, and so forth for each item.
The house mains power just blipped for about 2 seconds. Total blackout for no reason I could see. The system stayed up due to my APC BackUPS ES-750. Whew. You know, I ran without backup for several months with no problem, but as soon as I installed the UPS (and I mean starting within 24 hours), the power’s been going out for one reason or another about once a week. (The old backup, a two-battery SmartUPS 450, quit working after the last break-in. I have no idea why.)
Final step: both the new card and the monitor have DVI digital connectors. Unfortunately, neither came with a DVI cable. I’ll pick one up tomorrow. We’ll see if that makes a noticeable difference.
That’s it for now. Sue gets her monitor back, so I no longer have to worry about it getting stolen.
Ha! I just discovered that I can turn on the “advanced” visual effects for the desktop. These did not work well on the old card, but seem fine with the new one. The one where the window being dragged warps as if it were rubber is very amusing.
I’m not actually sure if this was there before or not: my desktop is effectively twice as wide as it was. I can have a bunch of stuff open on side of the desktop, then drag my current window over to the right edge, and look at a whole ‘nother set of clutter over there. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to to use this, or if it just means that now I’ll lose tools on my digital desktop as well as my physical desk top, but at least the virtual desktop has some indicators to help me find things that have been buried or pushed aside.
I think I like this.