New 20″ Widescreen LCD
My old LCD monitor was a 17″ CTX with a 16 millisecond response time. I purchased two of those from Newegg about two years ago and have had them sitting side by side on my desk since, one connected to my server and the other to my work(/gaming)station. Last week I did my nightly hunting around Newegg and discovered that a Black BenQ 20.1″ Widescreen LCD Monitor with digital input and a 8 millisecond response time was on sale. It included a $40 mail in rebate, $15 instant rebate, and free three day shipping (~$20 savings). Going from 17″ to 20″ in size, 16ms to 8ms in response time, 1280×1024 to 1680×1050 in resolution, and 4:3 to 16:9 in screen ratio was a big change I have been looking forward to for some time now. I sent in a postal money order and a week later UPS dropped it off.
Getting my Ubuntu installation to pickup on the new widescreen was not the easiest thing in the world, but far easier then other things I’ve had to do in the past with Linux. All I had to do was set my new HorizSync, VertRefresh, and add the new “1680×1050″ resolutions. It was suggested to me to use a Modeline Generator if I had any problems, but so far there seems to be no reason to. I kept my old 4:3 resolutions just incase if there’s a problem and I need to go back to my old 17″ LCD. Here’s a sample of my xorg.conf:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" Option "DPMS" HorizSync 31-81 VertRefresh 56-76 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "NVIDIA Corporation NV40 [GeForce 6800 GT]" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 1 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 4 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 8 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 15 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection
I have been experimenting with a fresh Suse 10.1 install under VMware Workstation and discovered it was a little friendlier excepting my new resolution preference as Yast had a better graphical front end.
