LCD monitors, again

[gt40]

gotto admit, everyone who sees my 2005fpw is impressed with it.
Great monitor for Cad - most layouts are wider than they are tall, and it allows you to load up the side bars and still have a decent view window.

[Paddy]

grrrr.. The 2005FPW is £320 here! Thats over £100 more than it should be even after TAX according to the exchange rate!

[Umfriend]

Doh! euro 537 here and that excludes shipping. The 3007 is euro 2,140.

Buggers.

[az]

See, Crab-Man: The 24" Samsung 244T is just over 1000,-, with great IQ, HDCP in, and faster response times (and the largest resolution a single link DVI can transmit, AFAIK)

[Mehen]

hrm, widescreen in portrait instead of landscape would be pretty cool for coding...

[TnT]

Looks like I'm getting Dell...

For $8 more they have the non-WS version. Which is better? They apparently have slightly different stats:
WS - 300 cd/m² Brightness, 600:1 Contrast
non - 400:1 Contrast, 250 cd/m2 Bright

I'll look at my bank account and then probably pull the trigger tonight. Any final thoughts?

BTW, most programmers I know and my own coding style requires that long lines be broken up around 80 characters. A lot of coding is still done in a console or terminal (ie over SSH), so I only need width for various project management tools.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Jessterw]

Well portrait mode is a wondrous thing for long lines of text, but given that I work within an IDE for most coding tasks, having that extra bit of width comes in handy for the non-code view panels.

I also don't tend to maximize my windows, so that I can group them in ways that fit into my workflow. So it really depends on what your requirements are as to what style monitor you get. I've found I get far more benefits from a widescreen than not.

[TnT]

With the portrait mode I'm leaning towards widescreen now.

[Mehen]

if you ever do decide to do some gaming the extra contrast from the WS would be nice - particularily for dark games. I've seen doom3 on a low contrast lcd - HORRIBLE

Plus if you are ever watching movies the ws would be much better (you'd use a lot more of the screen [everything is widescreen nowadays])

[Wombat]

I use mine for games, coding, and movies. For coding, I either have Eclipse set up on the widescreen (with room for other apps / windows) or vim in portrait (lots of code).

[Fat Tone]

Can you check out the reviews section of http://www.pcpro.co.uk/ ? The latest magazine has a round up of 20" and larger TFTs. The DELL is NOT top of the list!

The (cheaper) Philips 200W6 is their choice.

[az]

There are only one or two 20" Widescreens that are not from Dell that have portrait mode.

[rylan]

Go with the widescreen one. The specs on the other normal Dell one are pretty crappy.

[Jessterw]

Can you check out the reviews section of http://www.pcpro.co.uk/ ? The latest magazine has a round up of 20" and larger TFTs. The DELL is NOT top of the list!

The (cheaper) Philips 200W6 is their choice.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/139/widescreen-tfts/products.html

If that is anything like what the magazine has then a Dell is indeed the top choice
It's just happens to be larger than 20"

What's odd, and I'm not suggesting anything against the reviewers or the review process, is that the issues they have with the Dell monitors are not the same issues I've encountered. Point in case, the white levels are perfect on mine here, which is something of importance when I'm working with graphics.

I'd still recommend the Dell just on the basis of the features it has, specifically the portrait mode.

[az]

For 20" widescreen with portrait mode, there's hardly any other option, and the Dell's alright (though I've heard complaints of backlight bleeding, so if you like to work in a dark room with a black background, this may be annoying). At 24" though, the 244T seems to be the one.