On Sun, 2012-11-04 at 05:46 -0600, Daniel Smith wrote:

I am right now looking
around at getting a new monitor and since I know obviously this list has as lot of graphics and image specialist type people on it...

Some things to look for -
. contrast ratio (higher is better)
. IPS screens generally have the best colour fidelity but cost more . many LCD/LED screens have only 6-bit colour, so e.g. 64 levels of blue. Others have as high as 10 or 11 levels (per channel), but cost more.
. some monitors have a USB hub, some also have speakers built in, but the more they spend on add-ons, the less care they take over the monitor part for a given price. The USB hub is a useful addition though. . check it comes with cables! (see below)

I realized when I went to the Frys store here in Houston I had never even looked at a LCD/LED one. Some of them were pretty crappy compared to the old Viewsonic .25 dot pitch etc...

.25mm is about 100dpi. You can get 150dpi monitors fairly easily, but watch that you need a video card and cables that can drive them.

Monitors today may or many not include a VGA port, so after you choose a monitor you might need to spend $50 or more on cables and adaptors. For high-fidelity colour you probably want the connection called "DisplayPort". For anything over 2,000x1000 pixels or so, you may need a dual-slot video card and a spcial DVI cable, or DisplayPort. Not all DVI cables will work.

I have a Dell 24" monitor that is not perfect but is better than anything I could buy locally (I tried!).

Liam