[Dabhand16]

After spending quite some time thinking about getting a bigger monitor/getting two monitors/getting a widescreen monitor, I came down to a widescreen offering the best VFM/space compromise.

I then spent some time looking at reviews, and in most, the Dell Ultrasharp 20" widescreen featured as a best buy. Only snag was the price was more than I really wanted to pay, so the idea was shelved and I thought that I would have to keep using my old 15" LCD forever, or lower my sights to a smaller monitor.

Then Rob gets a Dell and he is soooooo enthusiastic about it, my lewd thoughts of no more eyestrain and the ability to leave tools and pallettes lying all over the place were too much. The place Rob used are out of stock, so I thought I'd just have a quick look around. I found them lurking not so far from Rob in Fordingbridge. £249 + £15 p&p.

It should arrive on Monday.

[Dave]

Your as easily led by our peers as I am. Your going to love it !!! Now put a TV card in yer PC & you can use it as a TV. Also check out playing a DVD film through it

[Dabhand16]

Originally Posted by Dave

Your as easily led by our peers as I am. Your going to love it !!! Now put a TV card in yer PC & you can use it as a TV. Also check out playing a DVD film through it

Not a huge TV/movie fan, Dave. Radio rules!

[Dave]

Thats meant to be "Radio Rocks.....not alf"

[Dabhand16]

Hear, hear.

[Dabhand16]

Well, the Dell is now resident on my desk, and very nice it is too! Ordered about 15.00 on Friday, delivered 11.00 Monday. How bad is that?

First impressions are that it is really good, but I have to admit to some small problems in the set-up.

First, my graphics card will not support the native resolution of 1680x1050. I installed the latest drivers, but to no avail. After trying different settings, I've settled on 1280x768 for the moment. When my computer was built, widescreen monitors were not available, and widescreen TV's were only just getting into the shops. I guess that an upgrade of the graphics card will be something to consider.

The effect at first was that all of my thumbnails were widescreen, and opening them up in editing software retained the distortion. I fiddled around with the pixel aspect ratio settings, and got close to normal, but that found somewhere (and I can't now find it again to check I read it right) that said that this was only a temporary fix, and should not be used for editing.

By now, I'd set the resolution to 1280x768, and found that if I resized the window that PS opened up in to something near 'normal' I have achieved the desired larger working area with some space around the sides to dump the palletes and tools.

Rob, did you have any problems like this? I suspect not, as you probably would have mentioned them.

[Rob Barron]

I did have to download new drivers for my NVidia graphics card (5700LE) but that all went very smoothly. I got them, installed them, went back to change res and this time I had everything up to 1600x1080. However, I tried it, worked perfectly but everything was very small so I realised I'd need to go smaller. I have actually gone down to 1280x800 which works beautifully.

I can easily have two A4 documents open side by side in size 10 fonts and read both perfectly. If I really wanted to, I could go higher but this is better for my needs: high res but lets me sit back when typing and not needing to squint at the screen!

The screen will automatically adjust for widescreen as soon as you set the res but of course if you have a non-widescreen picture on your desktop as the wallpaper, it might look a bit stretched.

Have you been and checked out the website of your graphics card manufacturer as it is likely they will have drivers for newer resolutions. If not, I'm afraid the only option IF you want true widescreen is a more modern graphics card. These are not at all expensive so might be worth considering, depends how much you want to use it to its full potential really.

Hope that helps,
Rob

[Dabhand16]

That was quick, Rob!! After reading your reply, I've now set it on 1280x1024, but it seems to have brought back the letterbox images, so I'll have to try both settings to see how I get on.

I have a ATI Radeon 7000 card (steam powered). Even with the latest drivers, it will not support any widescreen ratios.

If I can't work around it, i'll consider an upgrade.

Thanks for the help.