Any flat panel (LCD) monitor experts out there?

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 23:49 -0700, Mark Jarvis wrote:
> 
> I just purchased a std 19" flat panel monitor for my wife's system.
> She's less than pleased with its performance.  She says that the
> picture is not sharp and the colors are washed out.  Since this is the
> opposite of my (limited) experience with 15" flat panel monitors at
> school, I'm wondering if I should suspect a defective monitor?
> 
> Are there some tricks for adjusting the monitor that might help?  
> 
> It came with both brightness & contrast maxed out.  So far, I've found
> that knocking both down to approx. 30% helped the washed out, but the
> blacks in her wallpaper pictureare still a little grayish.
> 
> Both the monitor & the video card are DVI capable.  I assume that
> switching to that would be a good thing. It looks like I'll need to
> buy a different cable to use those connectors.  Comments, anyone???
> 
> After hookup, it came up with her std. 1024 x 768 resolution.  I
> thought that moving to the default 1200 x 1024 would improve
> sharpness, but without improving sharpness, all it did was make
> graphics and icons smaller and harder to use. (She needs cataract
> surgery but keeps putting it off.)
> 
> Any comments and help will be appreciated.
----
1 - Use DVI cable when possible - I find it hard to believe that the
monitor has DVI connectors but didn't come with DVI cable.

2 - 19" monitor should probably be run at either 1600x1200 or 1280x1024
for maximum sharpness (depends on monitor/videocard) but yes, the higher
number of pixels means smaller images. Using the display at lower
resolutions tends to muddy the display. One of the benefits of LCD is
that you can move it closer without the heat/radiation/desktop mass of a
typical CRT.

3 - Contrast should probably be at max...Brightness should rarely be at
maximum.

4 - KDE 'Control Center' includes 'gamma control' (I don't know about
GNOME) and I have found it to be useful to adjust the gamma.

5 - Consider 're-setting' monitor settings back to default

Craig