Mark's Blog

I see this is my first post of 2005. Not exactly what I expected but I have no excuses.

Anyway, my news is that I bought a new monitor. Finally joined the legions of LCD owners with the purchase of a Samsung 915N. The monitor features a 19" display, 8 ms response time, 1280 x 1024 native resolution and 700:1 contrast. Plus, the best news is that there were no dead pixels upon arrival. The colors look very good and there is a very comprehensive on-screen menu. There is a huge amount more real estate with the larger resolution (I was running things at 1024 x 768 before). I previously had a Samsung 955 DF, which was very nice but at the 1280 x 1024 resolution things still looked a bit too small for some reason so I couldn't use that regularly. I knew the viewable area on a 19" CRT is less than on a 19" LCD but didn't realize how big the difference really is.

I played a bit of MOHAA a few minutes ago with it, and was a little disappointed, although I didn't fully expect it to be perfect for FPS games. I expect that I'll continue to use the CRT for serious gaming, and the LCD for everything else since it's easier on the eyes.

Update: I was fiddling around with some of the on-screen menu options and there is an "Entertainment" mode which seems to make the screen a bit brighter and more responsive. Played some more MOHAA and it was significantly better. Not quite CRT-standard but close.