School me on external monitors

(Or direct me to a site?)

I have an E4300, and I want to use an external monitor. I went to Staples to look at some monitors, only to see how horrible and blurred 20-23" monitors looked. They were all using the same output, so they were all using the same resolution of 1600x900.

Long story short, I want to get an external monitor 21.5" at the least, 23" at the most, capable of 1920X1080. Is it a waste of money, or will my E4300 actually be able to put up a nice sharp picture? Can I use a higher res?

THe current resolution is 1200x800, and it has the intel 4500 integraded graphics.

THanks

 

All of the montiors at Staple look awful, regardless of quality, due to the horribly degraded quality of the output. Staples does a very poor job of displaying monitors.

With the current Arrandale generation, even Intel integrated graphic easily support a 1080P output. However, if you're used to a 1280x800 resolution, do you really want to deal with tiny icons and shrunken text?

 

I just want more space. I want to be able to have a .ppt or .pdf next to a word doc or something to that effect and be able to see both of them clearly. I feel like 21"+ would allow me to do that, as long as my comp can push it clearly.

I was hoping to see what that resolution looked like when I went to staples, but ya that failed. Any suggestions of a place to look?

 

I'd look at Dell monitor deals. They sometimes have 40% off coupons for monitors.

Dell Coupons, Dell Coupon Codes, Dell Deals
Dell - Monitor Deals

My cousin just got IN2010N monitor for $99 when Dell had it on "Deal of the Day" section.

Also newegg has good monitor deals from time to time. What's good about it is that you're tax exempted if you live outside CA or NJ.

 

How is he going to have tiny icons when he can just get a 24" or something monitor?

 

Have you seen the recent price dropps in 27-28 inch monitors? $249? I think my dual 20s at the office are due for replacement....

 

Go to a MicroCenter, BestBuy, Fry's, or some other shop that has a high volume of computer sales. Odds are the monitors will be directly hooked up to a specific machines, so you can check out the display at proper resolution via a dedicated graphics stream.

 

He or she is used to looking at a resolution of 1280x800 on a 13.3" panel. On a 24" monitor (or even a 19" monitor) at a resolution of 1920 x whatever those icons are going to be larger.

I'm using a 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor, and yes the icons are a bit small (but I can fit a gazillion of the things on the desktop!). And I really appreciate being able to open two full-sized Word docs or big spreadsheets side-by-side. Also handy for retouching hi-res photos.

 

Best buy, newegg.com are both ok.

 

It depends. LCD screens were getting drastically cheaper, but quality went downhill also.

Michael