My monitor died on me this weekend. I was sitting at the computer using it when it started flickering horribly. I decided to turn it off before it felt like it should blow up in my face, and as I did I could hear th inside give a final gasp of life and then what sounded like the insides disintegrating. Something was definitely going on in there.
Anyway, it’s dead. I can’t believe it lasted this long, really. It was a 22″ (or so) CRT Dell monitor that I bought used from a surplus sale about five years ago for something like $40. It always had this little nasty green tint overtone to it that could be mostly fixed by adjusting the other colors. Aside from that, it worked great.
It was always a little too big for me, though. Not the display size, but the wide load behind it. I swear that thing weighs at least 80 pounds. I hurt my back getting it off my desk this morning. It certainly kept me from wanting to go to LAN parties.
I guess I’m finally gonna have to bite the bullet and get me a widescreen monitor. I’ve been holding out on 4:3 displays as long as I could. I remember when widescreen TVs were first coming out, and I totally scoffed at the idea and how strange it was to see everyone on TV stretched. I swore I’d never get one (of course, this was many years ago). I do remember seeing a Sony TV long ago that I wanted to get that wasn’t 16×9 but instead was something like a 2.35 ratio … basically, scope. It was really awesome and I wanted to get *that* one, since I figured if you were gonna widescreen, go all the way! I haven’t seen it since, but I still swear I saw it on display at Circuit City a long time ago.
I found a nice Samsung monitor that I wanna get. It’s also 16×9. I noticed that they sell monitors now that are 16×10 as well … I found a really nice one in that ratio as well, but I can foresee having three sets of aspect ratios displays in my house would drive me mentally insane.
I still have one 4×3 TV in my house, it’s an old 27″ CRT TV, and it’s awesome. I fear that I’ll someday replace it and go all widescreen in my house. Fortunately, I’m already used to seeing stretched faces, and watching stuff in original format actually makes me think it looks wrong. We’ll see, though, I’m infamous for being stubborn and holding out. That, or the same thing will probably happen … that TV will die and I’ll reluctantly buy a replacement that’s 6x the cost and 20x the quality, complaining all the way. 🙂
You are aware that you can set your 16:9 TV to display black bars on the left and right when it shows 4:3 content instead of seeing “stretched faces” (just like you have black bars on top and bottom on a 4:3 TV with 16:9 content), aren’t you? 😉
You’re so funny.
But strange affinity for 4:3 TV notwithstanding, widescreen is very very nice for computing. You’ll see what I mean once you start using it. I hate going back to a 4:3 monitor.
As for TV, I can’t stand it when things are squashed or stretched. Give me letterbox any day.