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Computing On The Big Screen Forget about CAD & desktop publishing on a small screen. To really work with these programs, you need a large-screen, high-resolution monitor. By JIM SHARPLES* The recent popularity of others , such as desktop pubGUis (Graphical User Interlishing, CAD and graphics, faces) and WYSIWYG (What larger screens are almost a You See Is What You Get) necessity. If you try doing a has resulted in a marked 2-page layout in PageMaker decrease in the prices of or Ventura, for example, the monitors, particularly the resulting display is practicolour models. cally unusable. Or what The advent of Windows about trying to design a 3.0 in the IBM PC compatlarge double-sided board on a small screen. It is possiible market has created a ble but not the most effihuge demand for colour cient way. monitors capable of dis playing higher resolutions Colour or mono? than ordinary VGA. These higher resolutions are reEighteen months ago the ferred to as "Super VGA" price gap between colour and can not only display and monochrome monitors the 640 x 480 pixel resoluwas fairly substantial and tion of standard VGA , but if the application didn't abThe Philips 4CM2799 20-inch colour monitor supports also 800 x 600 and 1024 x solutely require colour, then resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 & can be used with a wide 768 resolutions. Many of monochrome was certainly range of video driver cards. the larger monitors also supthe most economical purchase. Now, however, the port 1280 x 1024 but there there is a corresponding demand for are not (yet) many video cards able to price gap has narrowed to the point larger monitors. It's very nice having where monochrome would not be a display at this resolution. a 14-inch monitor displaying Win- wise choice, particularly as many Most of the recent monitors are the "multisync" type; ie, they synchro- dows or CAD (Computer Aided De- newer programs rely on colour to make sign) in 1024 x 768 resolution but nise at multiple frequencies. This them easier to use. Menus, grids, tools, everything is so small! Just try using a icons, selection areas and many asmeans that IBM compatible users 14-inch monitor, swap to a large moniaren't the only ones to score - Mac, pects of the programs use colour to tor for a week or so, then return to the Amiga and other computers can use make the user's job more instinctive 14-inch monitor. You'll really miss and obvious. the same monitors. that large screen. Windows 3.0 is a good example. Larger monitors For some applications, the smaller Whereas Windows 2.0 hardly needed size is not much of a problem but for With the increase in resolution, colour and indeed, it was just a 1uxury, 16 SILICON CHIP Windows 3.0 was designed to use colour. In fact, it is somewhat difficult to use quite a few applications in monochrome! CAD is another software category where colour is almost essential, particularly with multi-layered applications such as circuit board design. Drawings quickly become confusing and hard on one's concentration. But what about the difference in quality between monochrome and colour? Let's face it - monochrome will beat colour hands down in a contest where resolution is the same. It's much easier having one electron gun than trying to align three at once. Again, things are changing. The resolution of colour monitors is improving all the time, to the point where it doesn't really make that much of a practical difference, and in any case the advantages of colour outweigh the clarity of monochrome. How large? OK. We've decided on a large colour monitor. What is the best size to go for? Well, here's where personal taste steps in. In my view, a 17-inch monitor is ideal for the broadest range of applications, whether they be textbased (eg, wordprocessing or database under MS-DOS) or graphicsbased as in Microsoft Windows. Text- based applications can be rather overpowering when viewed on a 21-inch monitor, unless you happen to be very short-sighted, in which case they are a great idea. I know of one person who bought a 20-inch monitor for this very purpose. (By the way, notice how we still persist in measuring monitor diagonal sizes in inches? Obviously, this is the strong influence from the American computer industry). 17-inch monitors As mentioned, this is the best general purpose monitor size. They have the added advantage of taking up a little less space on the desktop, though even a 17-inch monitor seems huge after a standard 14-inch one. There haven't been many of this size monitor around until a recent flurry of announcements by various manufacturers. It seems they all suddenly realised that this would be the logical choice for many users and announcements have been appearing hard on the heels of one another. Another curiosity is that they have appeared with almost the same specifications: flat screen, 1280 x 1024 maximum resolution, 0.26mm dot pitch and very similar horizontal and vertical scan rates and bandwidth. These specs are pretty good for this A video glossary Autosizing: this is the ability of the monitor to maintain a constant image size across different video modes. For example, this is important when entering Windows in 1024 x 768 non-interlaced mode from the normal DOS VGA mode. If this is not available, either automatically or as a user-programmable option, then the user must change the size and position of the image every time another mode is entered. Dot Pitch: the distance between the holes in the shadow mask in a colour monitor. The shadow mask (which sits behind the screen) ensures that each electron beam (from the red, green and blue guns in the tube's neck) hits the correct dot in each triad of red, green and blue phosphors. The smaller the dot pitch, the finer the grain of the image. Horizontal Frequency: how often the monitor scans a horizontal line, measured in kHz. VGA is standardised at 31.SkHz, while Super VGA varies depending on the vertical refresh rate of the graphics adaptor. Multisync: a term originated by NEC to indicate that the monitor can synchronise to any horizontal line frequency within a given range. Some cheaper monitors are actually "multiple fixed frequency" which means that they synchronise to particular modes, usually VGA 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. Pixel: the smallest triad or group of triads, depending on the resolution selected. Triad: a triad comprises three phosphor dots - red, green and blue arranged in a triangle. Each of the three electron guns is assigned a particular colour and that gun excites only its own phosphor dot in the triad. The combination of excited dots determines pixel colour. Vertical Frequency or Refresh Rate: how often the monitor scans a compete screen, measured in Hz (cycles per second). The higher the refresh rate, the less flicker is noticeable. Standard VGA has a vertical frequency of 60 or 70Hz, while Super VGA should be an absolute minimum of 56Hz but preferably 70Hz or higher. This 19-inch high-resolution monochrome monitor from Radius is ideal for desktop publishing & graphics design. It is fully VGA compatible & can be used with either PC or Macintosh systems. Video Bandwidth: the highest video input frequency the monitor can accept, measured in MHz. This determines the maximum resolution . MAY 1992 17 size of monitor and should make them a popular choice. benefit from a larger view of all those figures . 19 & 21-inch monitors Portrait & 'full page' monitors These are the big ones, needing plenty of desk space. Don't try to use them on a narrow desk - you'll land up with the keyboard in your lap! And do a weightlifting course before moving the monsters. They are definitely in the heavyweight class. Once in place however, the view is worth it. Both graphics and text are easier to see and manipulate, reducing the need to zoom in on working details. There is a corresponding saving in screen redraw time between the zoom levels. Monitors in this class usually have a 0.31mm dot pitch, which is quite acceptable, though some go as low as 0.28mm: This is the ideal monitor size for those working almost exclusively in high-resolution graphics mode, whether it be CAD, desktop publishing, animation or even large spreadsheets. Maybe accountants could also What is a 'full page' monitor? A number of times I have been asked to recommend a monitor to fit this vague notion and when pressed to clarify the request, the customer usually answers: "a monitor that displays an A4 page". My answer is almost always in the form of another question: "What size would you like your A4 page to be?". The person wanting a full page monitor usually needs it for a desktop publishing application and I have to point out that even a 12-inch monitor can display a full A4 page. But if they want it displayed full size, the options are limited and are pretty expensive. I also point out that unless they are working solely on publications where only a single page view is necessary, the portrait or 'full page' monitor can be a liability when viewing two pages fllc Edit l2plloni ,eage Iypc Elemcnl Window Help J Computirig'On •I The l3ig Screen Forget about t,AD & desktop publisll.Ufg on a small screen. ToreaD~ work ~ilhthesep~og,JpDl~,youneeda large-screenh,gh-resolution "f°:nil'or. ~:,- JIM SHARPLES ' These two captured screen images from PageMaker show how much more information is displayed at higher resolutions. At top left is a 1280 x 1024 display, while at bottom right is a 640 x 480 (standard VGA) screen capture. The text is directly readable on-screen in the highresolution mode but has "Greeked" in the low-resolution mode. 18 SILICON CHIP side-by-side, or using other applications. The only exception to my prejudice against portrait monitors is a rather curious animal - the Radius Full Page Pivot monitor. This colour monitor acts as its name suggests - it pivots between portrait and landscape modes, using software drivers to change the orientation when the monitor is pivoted. Portrait mode can only be used in applications for which a driver exists and these include some CAD, wordprocessing and spreadsheet programs, plus Microsoft Windows. A Mac version is also available. The Pivot measures 15-inches diagonally, so it does not really fit into the "large monitor" category. VESA & Swedish standards The Video Electronics Standards Association has defined standards for Super VGA signals to reduce flicker. This can be particularly noticeable when the screen background is white, as in Microsoft Windows. The official standard requires the vertical refresh rate to be 72Hz at 800 x 600 resolution and 60Hz at 1024 x 768 resolution. Both monitors and video boards must be able to conform to or exceed these standards. Sweden's National Board for Measurement and Testing (MPR) has pub- A 17-inch colour monitor is a good compromise between size & cost for many applications. The multi-sync CMl 7MBD from Tatung features 0.26mm dot pitch, 1280 x 1024 resolution (max.), a flat dark-tinted CRT & a microprocessor-based control system for automatic screen configuration. It can be used with a wide range of driver cards for both PC & Macll computers. lished standards for monitor emissions, designed to reduce health risks and eye stress. Many manufacturers are designing monitors to conform to the standards, though there is still some controversy over the supposed health risks. Video graphics boards When discussing high resolution monitors, one part of the equation that cannot be left out is the board generating the screen graphics, and here I will restrict discussion to PC compatibles. A series of simple calculations will show these results: Resolution 640 x 480 (VGA) 800 X 600 1024 X 768 Pixels 307,200 480,000 789,504 It is obvious that at the common high resolution of 1024 x 768 the number of pixels is over three-quarters of a million! And the poor graphics board has to frequently redraw most of them! Standard VGA has a limit of 16 colours, whereas high resolution boards can usually generate 256 colours. This means that the high resolution board is manipulating five times as much information as VGA. The question of which graphics board to use is therefore an important one if you want your screen updates to happen at an acceptable pace. Basically there are two types of high-resolution boards: those with graphics coprocessors and those without. The most popular and possibly fastest of the boards without coprocessors are those based on the Tseng Labs ET 4000 chipset. Apart from Tseng Labs themselves, quite a number of manufacturers produce boards using this chipset. A better option for those using large monitors at high resolutions are the coprocessor based boards. IBM ini- The Radius Pivot Display System is a colour monitor that pivots between portrait & landscape modes to suit your application. Versions are available to suit both the PC & the Macintosh family. tially produced the 8514/A coprocessor for 1024 x 768 interlaced resolution and others have subsequently cloned this chip, adding extended features like 1024 x 768 non-interlaced and higher scanning frequencies (see glossary for an explanation of some of the terrris). Another popular coprocessor is the Texas Instruments TMS34010 and TMS34020, and boards designed around these chips can respond to TIGA, the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture software interface. In terms of speed, there is not much to choose between the 8514/ A and MAY 1992 19 There are also some lower-cost boards appearing which contain the Sierra DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), which is 15-bit and generates 32,768 colours, and then there are other 16-bit adapters such as IBM's XGA which generate 65,536 colours. For most purposes, a 256-colour board based on the S3 chip would be my choice, both in terms of speed and economy. What should you look for? Hitachi's Model CM2187 is a 21-inch multi-sync colour monitor with a 0.31mm dot pitch & a resolution ofup to 1600 x 1200 (non-interlaced). It is compatible with a wide range of graphics standards & features microprocessor control. TMS340x0, though the 8514/A-based boards tend to be a little cheaper. A new contender is the 86C911 chip produced by S3 Inc. The boards based on the S3 are particularly exciting, not only because of their fast speed, but because they cost about half the price of the other two types. Most graphics boards available gen- erate 16 and/or 256 colours (4 and 8 bits per pixel), though there are other more expensive boards available which can generate 16.8 million colours (24 bits per pixel). These boards would only entice the most demanding users who need photographic-like images and can afford the thousands of dollars required to purchase them. 16-inch Colour Display for the Mac Apple's new Macintosh 16-inch Color Display features 832 x 624 resolution & is supported by all current Apple video cards & by the on-board video interface of the Quadra CPUs. Alternatively, users can choose the 8.24 GC card (not needed for Quadras) which offers 32,768 colours & graphics acceleration. 20 SILICON CHIP Dot pitch is important - newer 17inch monitors are 0.26mm, while a 20-inch monitor should be 0.31mm or less. Autosizing is a definite requirement if you will be changing modes and may be either automatic or user-programmable. Colour-correction may be important depending on the type of work you do. The new NEC FG series is one of the few monitors available with this feature built-in. Non-interlacing at higher resolutions can increase viewer comfort but it is important to match graphics card capabilities to that of the monitor. Finally, spend a reasonable amount of time looking for the monitor you need and don't skimp on price and quality - you will spend long periods looking at the screen. SC •Jim Sharples runs Computrack, a company that supplies PC-based desktop publishing equipment. Phone (02) 451 2521.