6 ms·
Two things struck me as particularly surprising: He's still running a (high quality) 21" CRT. And he's using Ubuntu (considering switching to Arch). Somehow I e
by morsch 14y ago
Two things struck me as particularly surprising: He's still running a (high quality) 21" CRT. And he's using Ubuntu (considering switching to Arch). Somehow I expected him to be using some sort of insane manual install maintained since the nineties.
- jlarocco 14y agoMonitors took a huge step backwards in the switch from CRTs to LCDs. Up until just 2 or 3 years ago I was still using a gigantic Dell CRT that I had bought from a coworker for $10. It had better color, higher DPI, higher resolution and a better response time than the expensive LCD that replaced it. Oh, and it wasn't widescreen, which was nice.
- kylemaxwell 14y agoYeah but it feels like staring into a light bulb, doesn't it?
- jff 14y agoAn LCD screen literally has a fluorescent lamp inside it. What's your point?
- gfosco 14y agoWell said... I miss my old 21" CRT that had higher resolution than my current LCDs. (1920x1200 vs 1920x1080). Damn HD TV's for ruining the resolution craze.
- morsch 14y ago1920x1200 LCDs are still available, e.g. the Dell UltraSharp U241x, which are also very good displays overall (it's not a TN panel for starters).
- sunkencity 14y agoNot the LED ones.
- huggah 14y agoMaybe I've never used good CRTs? They have always given me migraines. I was seriously considering whether I needed to give up on being a developer because I wasn't sure I could continue to work with computers around the time LCDs started taking over. LCDs still sometimes give me migraines (after 12+ hours), and there's a big difference between high-quality and low-quality monitors; but I would never go back. I also don't recall CRTs being better (in terms of color, DPI and resolution) than the good monitors I use today.
- flomo 14y agoYep, the average bundled CRT was pretty terrible and far below the average bundled LCD. The higher-end CRTs (Trinitrons etc) were great, but tended to wear out over time. I'm somewhat surprised that Raymond still has one that hasn't gone blurry, as I haven't seen a nicely working one in quite a while.
- aidenn0 14y agoTrinitrons look great when they are new, but wear out way too fast. I stick to shadowmask screens for that reason (and still use a nice CRT at home)
- rogerbinns 14y agoOne thing I noticed is that many Americans had their CRTs at a 60Hz refresh rate. That instantly hurt my eyes so bad I couldn't look at the screen for more than a few seconds without them hurting a lot. Yet the Americans were completely impervious to this. In Europe there was legislation mandating a minimum refresh rate of 72Hz and I ran all my monitors at 85Hz.
- efsavage 14y agoThe switch happened more than 2 or 3 years ago. My ~$600 2004 LCDs had similar or better color, the same DPI, and a response time that was fast enough for anything short of FPS games, and that was against my beloved FD Trinitron. My ~$800 2007 LCDs beat CRTs on pretty much everything by a large margin.
- lurkinggrue 14y agoWorking in IT I am rather glad CRT are dead... Especially Sun Microsystem monitors. I think they would line those things with lead.
- truncate 14y agoSo did I. Though not as insane as RMS. I wonder though, why would he hate 16:9. Personally I like more width as I split Vim buffer vertically or tile more windows in that direction.
- jlarocco 14y agoMy dislike is that it loses a bunch of vertical space. 1920x1080 screens have 10% less vertical space than the older 1600x1200 screens. When writing code, it would be nice to have the extra 120 pixels available to see more of the file without scrolling. When reading PDFs or ebooks I'd like to see a single large page instead of two small pages right next to each other. Same with webpages - 99.9% of websites are hard coded to be <1000 pixels wide. It's pretty rare I need to see two websites side by side, but I have to do extra vertical scrolling a million times a day. I've never seen the benefit of tiling a bunch of windows, either. I can only concentrate on one window at a time, so, IMO, showing a million windows just adds a bunch of distraction. Widescreen is nice for watching movies, but terrible for everything I spend time doing on the computer.
- morsch 14y agoI think there are plenty of arguments for both sides and it comes down to a matter of personal taste and habit.
- mhd 14y agoWidescreen is also quite awkward in a portrait format, which I really liked with some old 1600x1200 displays, especially once you hit 3 monitors or more. Very nice vertical resolution, and you don't run into the "surveying my lordly domain" problem. Sure, a high enough resolution would be okay, too, as I wouldn't care as much whether I'd look at two 1200x1600 monitors side-by-side or one widescreen monitor with a 1600-ish v-res, but in all these years. there are only a few monitors that go beyond 1920/1600x1200, and most of them are ridiculously overpriced.
- brianobush 14y agoThe lack of vertical space helps me keep my functions short and to the point.