More Room, an d a View

ViewSonic's new flat-panel display gives back a lot of room on your desk.

Russell Kay

Computer displays in science-fiction movies are usually flat, thin, wall-hung panels. A decade ago, laptop computers brought us the first real-world prototypes of that vision, but those early screens were small, dim, expensive, and smeary.

Times change. ViewSonic has now introduced an elegant-looking , flat-panel desktop display that most users would lov e to have -- but at $2599, it costs more than most complete systems.

With a 14-inch viewable diagonal, the ViewSonic VP140 ViewPanel is slightly larger than a 15-inch CRT monitor and much larger th an any laptop. To the subjective eye, the image appears larger than it really is. For most applications, this 6-inch-thick display can easily replace a 17-inch monitor while taking up a lot less desktop space. Complete with its weighted base, it weighs only 12 pounds.

Contrast is high, blacks are really black, and there's a crispness to the image, corner to corner, that you don't see with CRT. Unfortunately, the image could be even crisper if it weren't for a persistent sur-face sparkle, which I found distracting.

The 2.3 million thin-film transistor (TFT) cells support a maximum resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels at 65,536 colors, and that's how the panel looks best; it may be the best-looking 1024 you've ever seen. But at 800 by 600, with any number of colors, the displayed image isn't nearly so attractive. Text is thicker than necessary and looks heavy, quite different from the same text on a CRT monitor.

The VP140 is finicky about video signals. It can use a standard graphics card, provide d the card's not too good. I first installed the VP140 on two systems equipped with higher-end video cards -- one an Artist Graphics 2000, the other a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 -- each having 4 MB of RAM. Both had previously been set for 85-Hz refresh rates, but the VP140 can't handle more than 75 Hz.

After changing the refresh rate on one machine, I had to sit through more than a half-dozen retries and reboots until the computer finally presented a signal that the VP140 liked, but it always got a bit flustered by the screen change after a Ctrl-Alt-Del. In the end, I didn't get the VP140 to work well with the Imagine board; when I substituted an inexpensive PCI video card, I experienced no further problems.

But this is one great monitor -- once it's up and running. If you can live with its limitations and its price, the VP140 is a terrific display that cleans up both your computer image and your desktop image.

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Product Information

VP140 ViewPanel..................................$2599

ViewSonic Corp.
Walnut, CA
Phone:    800-888-8583
Phone:    909-869-7976
Fax:      909-869-7318
Internet: 
http://www.viewsonic.com/

Circle 1016 on Inquiry Card.

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VP140 ViewPanel

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With its small footprint, sleek styling, and crisp image quality, the ViewSonic VP140 will dress up any desktop.

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Russell Kay is a BYTE technical editor. You can reach him at russellk@bix.com .