LCD Monitor

a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
edited August 2004 in Hardware
My grandmother needs a new monitor and she wants an LCD. She's visually impaired and currently runs her 19" CRT @ 800x600. I was looking at a ViewSonic LCD that does 1600x1200. My question is will the LCD take the 800x600 pixels and make them 2x2 effectively making the 1600x1200 LCD an 800x600 LCD (but without all the image distortions LCDs are known for when not running at the native resolution) or will it just run an 800x600 resolution and waste 3/4 of the screen area?

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    If she wants a native 800x600 display, I would highly recommend getting a native 800x600 LCD such as a good 15" viewsonic or something. A native res is going to be clearer no matter what, especially for someone vision impaired.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited August 2004
    15" is too small for her.

    her 19" crt isn't as large as she would like and going to larger crt isn't truly an option given the size of her desk.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Run @ 1600 but increase the font sizes and use Windows accessibility functions :)
  • celchocelcho Tallahassee, FL Member
    edited August 2004
    just run it at 800x600. i have worked with a number of people like that. they can't see well enough to see the distortion caused by stretching to fit the resolution, so it doesn't matter. it will be painful for those of us with good vision to see an lcd like that :) , but it will work for her. 1600x1200 should work well with 800x600 for exactly the reason you said. it wll just use blocks of 4 pixels as 1 pixel.the worst thing is when people with 1024x768 resolution 15 inch lcd's run them at 800x600. that just doesn't work well at all.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    I like shorty's idea better. That is what I have done for my Dad. The accessibilty functions can do it.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Definitely try the Accessibility functions.

    What I did for mom here was to default almost everything to Arial, 11 pt, and in fact if the CRT is working there is no reason you cannot set bigger fonts, large icons as default, and not even have to spend a ton of money on a LCD in order to get your grandmother her visibility compensation. The other thing that helps some older folks is more contrast, though a high contrast windows default theme might be too much glare for her. If you can get to her computer physically, with her there also, you can work with her by asking for reactions.

    If she has problems with glare, you can make most Windows use white text for icon labels and use a darker background for desktop to make contrast without too much bright overall. I did this for mom and myself here, my eyes are hyper bright-sensitive to large light areas.

    The other way is to use contrast and brightness controls to get deeper contrast some, without lights being too bright. If I knew some of what was happening with her eyes, could help more in compensating for her specifically. It's POSSIBLE that she needs a low-glare desktop, with somethign like a Cataract. I had to increase constrast, and tightly control brightness before my Cataract surgeries, both primary with lense implants, and SECONDARY for one eye when cataract grew back behind new lense from tiny bits of tissue remaining. OTHER eye will need laser surgery also, for a secondary cataract. the cataracts left a whitish cloudiness effect, bright was too bright in large areas of same, dark was less contrasting due to the cataract cloud. The nice thing here in the US is that Medicare picks up 80% of medically necessary Cataract surgery, both primary and secondary. The secondary was found by a glare test, BTW. And, you can see if she has need for such a test by getting feedback to high and low contrast desktops and how much white in apps like notepad bother her if notepad is full-screened. then you can play with font sizes and get an idea of what she can read as far as points in notepad. I used Wordf Perfect and a browser with Mom, found a happy medium that did not give her headaches due to too much contrast while letting her read well, but did it experimentally with her telling me what she did not like.

    A 19" LCD costs a lot more than a CRT monitor of same size and quality, even now, and would make things rougher edged at the res you want than switching from default system font to TTF Arial and then fine-tuning font sizes finer than system font will let you do (Arial is easier for many older folks to read than Times New Roman is, the non-serif fonts are easier to distinguish shape than are serifed fonts like Times Times Roman) . Also, note that most fairly inexpensive LCDs will look overall "colder" and bluer and less yellow and warm than a CRT monitor.
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