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Sweet spot in monitors

The best bang for the buck is a square 19 inch model

Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz wrote his first computer program in 1973 and has been a computer nerd ever since. He spent more than 20 years working in an IBM mainframe (MVS) environment. He has worked in the research and development group of a large Wall Street financial company, and has been a technical writer for a mainframe software company.

He teaches a large range of self-developed classes, the underlying theme being Defensive Computing. Michael is an independent computer consultant, working with small businesses and the self-employed. He can be heard weekly on The Personal Computer Show on WBAI.

Disclosure.

Michael Horowitz

We answer questions on The Personal Computer Show and I thought a recent one would be of interest. A listener wrote (paraphrasing):

I want to buy a new monitor, to be used mostly for Office type work (spreadsheets and Word documents, etc). At present, I am using a small old CRT. Can you make a recommendation for the "sweet spot" as far as best value.

Our monitor/TV expert, Alfred Poor responded:

"A 19" monitor is probably the sweet spot these days. Keep in mind that a 19" wide format monitor is actually much smaller than a 19" standard (4:3 aspect ratio) monitor. The extra width is not of any particular use except to watch movies and HDTV content, so don't expect any productivity gains from a wide format. So I'd recommend that you look at 19" normal aspect ratio monitors from the major brands."

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.