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Are There Affordable Low-DPI Large-Screen LCD Monitors?
jtownatpunk.net writes "As time goes by, I find myself supporting a greater number of users moving through their 40s and into their 50s (and beyond!). I notice more and more of them are lowering the resolution of their displays in order to 'make it bigger.' That was fine in the CRT days, but, quite frankly, LCDs look like crap when they're not displaying their native resolution. My solution at home is to hook my computer up to a big, honkin' 1080p HDTV, but that's a bit of a political risk in an office environment. 'Why does Bill get a freakin' big screen TV?!' Plus, it's a waste to be paying for the extra inputs (component, s-video, composite), remote, tuner, etc. that will never be used. And a 37-47" display is a bit large for a desk. So here's my question: Is there a source for 24-27" monitors running at 1366x768 that are affordable and don't have all of the 'TV' stuff? Or is my only choice to just buy 27" HDTVs and admonish the users not to watch TV? (And, no, just giving them big CRTs is not an option. Most people would rather stare at a fuzzy LCD than 'go back' to a CRT.)"
Are there any affordable High DPI monitors? Back in the day you used to be able to find 17" 1600x1200 crts, which were wonderful. My laptop is running at 1400x1050 @ 10", which is also very enjoyable. Are there any flat panel desktop displays out there with the same density? I'd love a 19-22" display running at 2560x1600.
Because there is more to look at than fonts... like the 16x16 icons everywhere.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Easy. Get a 30" Desktop LCD like the Dell 3007wfp and run it at exactly 1/2 its native vertical and horizontal resolutions (1280x800). You essentially get the same quality as if it were the native resolution (well, one to one mapping at least) and none of that crazy TV stuff. The best part is that if somebody with, well, "normal" eyes wants to use the monitor in its full 2560x1600 glory, they can simply switch the resolution.
I think the real problem here is that the software is rendering text way too small. Tons of websites out there insist on ridiculously tiny font sizes like 8 point.
Apple had at one point a plan to give OS X resolution-independent rendering, so that UI objects are always displayed at the specified physical size independently of resolution. That seems to have fallen by the wayside, but this is part of the correct solution--the other part is to alow the user to just say they want everything to be displayed larger at a specified ratio.
Are you adequate?
They could move the mouse by playing the antenna like a theramin.
Woooooo-EEEEEEEEE-oooooooo!
I want a "zoom feature" for the OS. Hold ctrl-mouse wheel and resize EVERYTHING on the damn machine.
MacOS/X has that feature, FWIW.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
And all sorts of business critical applications that use unscalable texts in the UI. Now you can blame the application for not scaling but usually just buying a bigger screen for the user is a lot cheaper than having the application fixed (if it is even fixable at all).
http://virtualize.wordpress.com/
...because if your eyes can't focus on the screen, everything's going to be blurry regardless. As long as the blurred area of an individual pixel on the rescaled display projects into an area smaller than the circle of confusion on your retina, it won't affect your perception of the screen's overall sharpness.
I have also solved this problem by using an LCD projector. One day when I left my glasses at home, I spent the day reading off the wall instead of my laptop.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
30 inch LCDs are available, with native resolution of 2560x1600. They're not cheap, of course.
If you need really big pixels for the vision-impaired, just run them at 1280x800 and there will be no artifacts (exactly 1:2 ratio), but still a tolerable resolution.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Finding myself in my mid 40's with a eye problem has affected work to a large extent. 20/20 all my life to end up with distorted vision in my right eye has led to a number of changes. First, went back to the huge Mitsubishi 2070 CRT. I find it clearer that the 19" LCD's. Second, received glare reducing glasses from corporate HR (gunnars.com) which greatly help glare issues with my wonky eye. Without the glasses I cannot work a full day. Third, installed a theme manager to try and darken the windows screen. For the most part this works except for the inability to darken Outlook backgrounds and still be able to read email.. Fourth, looking into a large LCD or similar which can display a high resolution (lots of real estate) with "large fonts"...
Fixer of things broken by people who really ought to know better
Please change your default Windows Font size (it's been possible forever; at least as far back as Windows 2000, and probably back into the 3.x days). Some things look good, most things break in unseemly ways. I try doing that every few years, all the way back to my 21" 1600x1200 monitor, but back away from it each time due to incompatible apps.
/frank
I tried it again this year - hooked up a PC to my 47" LCD HDTV running Media Center. Realized that I couldn't read text from the couch, so I increased the system font size to make email, etc legible. And Microsoft Windows Media Center, published by a company that really should be doing this kind of testing, took it's already 1" tall font, readable by a legally blind dog from 50 feet away, and blew it up even larger, breaking the screen layout in unusable ways.
And, so, I went back to the default system font size, again. I'll try it again in a few more years, but I just don't expect it to ever work the way a user wants it to work.
And the worms ate into his brain.
As usual, it's New Egg to the rescue. You can search monitors according to pixel size. The largest pixel sizes give you a resolution of 1920x1080 at 28" (~$370). There are also some even larger screens at lower resolution, but I don't know how big you want to go. They have large format screens - 32" at 1366x768, but those seem to be quite a bit more expensive (~$950).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254043
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889252035
Personally, I prefer a 4:3 ratio on my screens and those have become very hard to find.
Q: "Why does Bill get a freaki'n big screen TV?!"
A: "Because Bill doesn't bother the IT guy with stupid questions like this one."
It's not my intention to troll, but with KDE4 on Linux everything is vector graphics and scales percentage wise to a resolution instead of Windows XP where everything is just fixed size and looking horrible when scaled up.
So if you are running KDE 4.3 for example on a low resolution screen (try a full screen Windows game in Wine and kill it from a terminal and switch back to the terminal where X is running and you can see very tiny windows, icons and fonts untill you go to the controll center and set it to run on your native resolution) everything scales down. On higher resolution everything scales up. This, for me, is a major advantage over Gnome = 2.2.8 on very high resolutions.
I am amazed at why Windows still doesn't do this. Maybe it's for the better to buy a large standard definition Plasma screen. It would eat up about as much power as a large, low-DPI CRT screen and if you can still buy it it is very, very, very cheap. Think about 299 USD...
Here be signatures
Apple had at one point a plan to give OS X resolution-independent rendering, so that UI objects are always displayed at the specified physical size independently of resolution.
I think they still have that plan, but the engineering was delayed in shoring up the iPhone platoform...
However, you can use this today in most apps for OS X. You install the development tools, and then run /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/Quartz Debug.app - there's a menu option under Window for "UI Resolution" where you can set a scale. Most OS X apps after a restart obey the set scale, since they are all using the Cocoa text rendering... it also works with images.
That may well be a good option for people who are having eyesight issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's really only a few pixel densities manufactured today.
0.282mm to 0.285mm (19" 1440x900 or 22" 1680x1050)
0.270mm (seen in 24" 1920x1200 displays)
0.243mm to 0.248mm (19" 1680x1050 or 22" 1920x1080)
Personally, I find the 0.245mm pixels to be too small, with the 0.285mm pixels to be just about perfect for me. Then there's the 15.4" Thinkpad display that is 1680x1050, that has really really small pixels (around 128ppi or 0.200mm).
There is an Acer 27" that is 2048x1152 with reportedly 0.291mm pixels.
Basically, when monitor shopping, you need to look at a particular resolution (such as 1680x1050) and then make sure to buy the displays that are the upper end of the size range. The 1680x1050 glass is currently sold in sizes that range from 19" to 22". Your older users will be a lot happier with the 22" 1680x1050.
Or you could go looking for 24-26" 720p TV sets which are typically 1360x768 and have very large pixels. Of course, the small resolution will quickly become a bane to future users.
All of the smaller 1080p TV sets are all 24", which is only a pixel size of around 0.270mm. So the 22" 1680x1050 displays with 0.285mm pixels are a better choice.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Since we're talking about Windows-land, it's worth mentionning that Windows Vista and Windows 7 both automatically scale icons to fit the display you're using, this way the icons take up about the same amount of physical space on screen, regardless of the size of the screen you're using. (as long as your screen properly reports itself to plug&pray).
I'm not sure what the issue is, though... if you want to buy somebody a 27" monitor, and are happy with 1366x768 resolution, then buy a TV. It won't cost you anywhere near as much as a 27" computer monitor will cost (besides which, if you specifically want the lower resolution, good luck finding a computer monitor over 17-20" that doesn't come in 1920x1080).
But if you're in Windows-land, updating to either Vista or 7 would solve the "large fonts and icon scaling" issue without needing to fiddle around with the graphics settings.
In fact, both Vista and 7, if Aero (i.e. DWM) is enabled, will scale up any application when you raise DPI. If application is marked as DPI-aware in its manifest, DWM will let the application handle that itself (by enlarging fonts and using scaling layouts); otherwise, it will apply simple bitmap scaling to the composed window bitmaps.
So my solution is to hand out reading glasses to the older users I support?
No. But recommending a visit to the opticians to any users who complain of bad eyesight would be a good idea, regardless of age. Are you planning on getting comfy sofas for those that don't like the office chairs too? If there's a genuine medical need for special equipment like a larger monitor then of course it's good practice to provide that where it's economically viable to do so. But that's after they've sought medical advice and can support a need for special treatement. The reason you need to worry about other staff asking 'Why does Bill get a freaki'n big screen TV?!' is because you don't have a good explanation for it. That should tell you evrything about the situation.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
This brings up a good point. A couple of years ago there was an employee where I work who was having ergonomic issues with their workstation. The complaints were valid and one of the solutions turned out to be a flat panel, LCD monitor. The lesson that the rest of the staff learned was that if they complained about ergonomic issues, they would also get LCD monitors. Soon enough a team had to be formed to deal with all of the ergonomic complaints coming from the staff.
Speaking as a 45 year old who has just had to buy his first pair of reading glasses, I absolutely concur. Not only do have these devices fixed usability problems with my computer display, they also fixed the same problem that was manifesting itself with the rest of reality.
If there's a genuine medical need for special equipment like a larger monitor then of course it's good practice to provide that where it's economically viable to do so.
On a related note apparently reading text that is too small does have its downsides:
Readers were asked to read under six especially demanding conditions known to cause eye fatigue. These were: reading small text sizes; reading low-contrast gray text; reading with a light source behind the reading material to cause glare; reading from too close a distance, which causes the eyes to point inward towards each other (convergence stress); reading from variable focal distances (accommodative stress); and reading while wearing glasses that simulate an astigmatism (refractive stress). While people were reading under these extra stressful conditions, we measured the activation in the orbicularis oculi muscle with a sensor placed 1.25 cm below the eye. Readers reported eye fatigue after reading under each of these conditions. Small text sizes, low contrast, glare and refractive stress all resulted in increased activity in the orbicularis oculi, while convergence stress and accommodative stress did not, though after reading in these two conditions, readers are more likely to report headaches and pain coming from behind the eye. Stressors such as small text size and glare are reported as irritation on the front of the eye.
My personal experience relating to computer screens is that growing up I had CRT, until my mid-twenties when LCD started becoming affordable. Up until I was about nineteen I did not know about changing resolutions on my screen and thus ran in Windows native resolution (which in the case of 95/98/XP seemed to be 60hz). I suffered from frequent migraines that would start with flashing lights in-front of my eyes and end with two days of such blinding headache that I was unable to do anything buy stay in bed, inside a dark room, and during the first day I would throw up at least once. Several days after such an episode I would feel like I was serious hungover. Turning the refresh rate up to 100hz effectively cured me over night, I did not have another episode until my late twenties when I played console with a mate on a CRT TV an entire evening.
Perhaps a bit of a digression there. But do not underestimate the importance of a good screen and a comfortable text/gui-size; undue strain on your eyes can significantly reduce the quality and quantity of your work.
The Long Now Foundation