Finally I got myself a brand new 19″ LCD monitor. I had been mulling around and wondering which brand to go for and whether it should be 17″ or 19″.
I found my Samsung 15″ monitor with its 1024 x 768 to be a tad small after upgrading the O/S from XP to Vista. Although before that, I already felt it was about time I upgraded a new monitor anyway, and put my good old 15″ monitor in my bedroom together with my good old Pentium 3 system.
I have decided not to go for another Samsung monitor as the colour was not very rich. After looking through the PC World review on ViewSonic VG930M, I decided this is the monitor I should go for.
After checking some points with the sales person in the All IT hypermart in Digital Mall, Petaling Jaya, I went ahead and bought the Viewsonic VG930M monitor. The box looked really big, but it was not heavy at all and I have no trouble carrying it to my car park at a distance. My plantar fasciitis didn’t give me too much trouble as I walk over to my car, in fact my heel pain has subsided quite a lot this year.
Setting it up was breeze, and it was just a matter of unplugging the old monitor and replugging in the new one in its place. At first glance, the 19″ ViewSonic was really huge! It dwarfed my previous monitor by a fair margin. In fact was so huge I have to crane my neck to look at the top portion of the monitor. The monitor height was at its lowest placement and I couldn’t lower it anymore. I think the included speakers have also raised the height of the monitor.
Despite what the PC World review said about the rather bland colours, I still find it much better than my previous 15″ Samsung monitors. It has viewing size of 1280 x 1024 pixels so more windows and items can be displayed and very good for Windows Vista especially to display the sidebar with its widgets. Just need to get used to the height, perhaps I may need a taller chair? Hah, talk about dwarfing my other monitor; it looks like it is dwarfing me as well too!
I plug an audio splitter so that I can make use of the monitor’s built in speakers while also using my external speakers as well. After listening to the audio output awhile, I concluded that the built in speakers were really of poor audio quality, the manufacturer may as well not include it as part of the package and it certainly would have helped lower the height of the monitor.
Made me wonder whether I should have gone for a 17″ monitor instead since the viewable pixel size is the same but because of the smaller monitor, may squeeze the display smaller. Well, it is too late now that I have already purchase it. But bigger should always be better anyway, and with the price coming down, the trend lately has been for bigger and bigger display monitor. I guess I just jump into the bandwagon and went with the trend for a big huge monitor.
Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the ViewSonic VG930M monitor. Now all I’ll just transfer my old Samsung 15″ to my bedroom and get rid of that old 800×600 pixel CRT monitor. At least my old Pentium 3 system has a better monitor to use it with.
Oh, in case you want to look through the PC World review, here’s the URL:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129138-page,1-c,monitors/article.html
