{"id":66,"date":"2008-04-23T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T07:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:46:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:46:34","slug":"i-bought-a-square-monitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"I Bought a Square Monitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently found PC monitor shopping to be a pain in the rump. No, it’s not because of the prices; LCD monitors are cheap<\/em>! (In fact, has anyone seen a CRT monitor in a store recently?) The quality of the monitors is okay. But what’s irking me are the monitors’ aspect ratio<\/em>.
\n
\nAn aspect ratio is the monitor screen’s horizontal and vertical dimensions. Traditional computer monitors use a 4:3 aspect ratio; the screen is 4 units wide and 3 units tall.<\/p>\n

\"4-3<\/p>\n

The monitor itself is sold by the screen’s diagonal measurement. But more important are the screen’s horizontal and vertical dimensions.<\/p>\n

For example, the 19-inch monitor I use on my main writing computer measures 14½ inches wide by 11½ inches tall (give or take). That’s a big, square screen which is perfect for my writing needs. I can see about a page of text in a window, plus have space on either side for toolbars and the desktop. Lovely.<\/p>\n

For my new monitor, I wanted something similar. Sadly, nothing at the store was square. All I could find were widescreen monitors, those sporting the 16:9 or HDTV format.<\/p>\n

\"16-9<\/p>\n

The wide or cinema<\/em> format is okay for watching movies, but not for the kind of document work (word processing, programming, web page design) that I do. Not only that, I’ve read recently that laptop computers are going to be sold primarily with widescreen monitors. The reason isn’t because more people enjoy the format or watch movies on their computers. Nope, it’s because those monitors, while sporting the same diagonal size, are cheaper<\/em> to manufacture.<\/p>\n

My 19-inch 4:3 monitor sports about 167 square inches of screen real estate. But a typical wide 19-inch monitor, measuring about 10 inches by 16 inches, has only 160 square inches. That’s 4<\/del>7 square inches less. Same “size” monitor, but cheaper to make.<\/p>\n

\"monitor<\/p>\n

The differences get more dramatic as the screen size increases:<\/p>\n

I have an old, 20-inch CRT monitor. It measures 16-by-12 inches for 192 square inches. A typical, widescreen 20-inch LCD monitor has dimensions of 17-by-10 inches for 170 square inches. Far, far less. That<\/em> is the real reason for the widescreen push.<\/p>\n

By the way, I ended up finding a 4:3 monitor (an LG Flatron, 17″ model at just over $200). But I had to go to an on-line store to find one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently found PC monitor shopping to be a pain in the rump. No, it’s not because of the prices; LCD monitors are cheap<\/em>! (In fact, has anyone seen a CRT monitor in a store recently?) The quality of the monitors is okay. But what’s irking me are the monitors’ aspect ratio<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4218,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/4218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}