The Big Picture

By David Em

(The Big Picture :  Page 1 of 1 )

We love computers when they work and hate 'em when they don't. A couple columns back I recounted some of the aggravation involved in properly configuring multiple screens under Windows XP. But once you beat the displays into submission, the productivity boost is more than worth the travails encountered along the way.

This week I take a look at two affordable new Hewlett-Packard LCD panels you can integrate into a multiheaded system and Matroxýs DualHead2Go, a peripheral that lets you add two screens to higher-end portables.

Real Progress

HP recently sent us two new LCD panels for review, the $350 19-inch L1906 and the $700 21-inch f2105. The L1906 delivers 1280x1024 resolution, the f2105 displays 1680x1050. Both operate at a 60Hz refresh rate.

Here's a point of comparison for how far LCD panels have come over the last few years. NEC introduced their 1280x1024x60Hz model 2010 LCD seven years ago at a cost of $12,000. The 2010 and HP's L1906 have very similar specs, but the L1906 is superior in every respect. It's much brighter, much lighter, much sharper, has a much thinner bezel, and in place of a tangle of thick RGB cables with BNC connectors, the L1906 has a single VGA output cable. Given that the L1906 costs about three percent of the 2010, that's pretty mind-boggling progress,

The low, low cost of this class of LCD makes buying into working with two or three displays fairly painless. Not too many years ago, a single high-quality 1280x1024 Eizo Nanao Trinitron tube cost two thousand bucks (and weighed 85 pounds). Now you can buy three L1906 panels for half that. At these prices, the barrier to entry for multiple displays is blasted to smithereens.

VGA Versus DVI

There are some key differences between the bare-bones L1906 and the f2105. A big one is that the L1906 uses an analog VGA cable, while the f2105 has a digital DVI connector.

 Page 1 of 1