User Interface
Apple and Dell are very different with regard to how they approach technology. The ever conservative Dell would rather not change things, particularly things that work, while Apple seems to enjoy completely changing everything in every iteration of any technology. Neither one of these strategies is bad, nor wrong. Dell has thousands of consumer-hardened products under its belt while Apple has thousands of design and creativity awards. Apple does make things pretty easy for us. There are only three options: on/off, brighter or darker.
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The touch sensitive controls give the Cinema 20” a feel that can only be described as “Mac-esque” while still retaining enough functionality on the display to not be totally removed from its operation (like with the
Samsung 193P). Ultimately, one of the reasons why sales of the SyncMaster 193P stagnated for several months was due to the fact that users don’t particularly like giving up 100% of their control features to the OS. With digital signal, a user can only really affect the backlight intensity anyway – and fortunately, Apple gives us control of that. Although simple, the Cinema 20” gives a good balance of control.
However, when you have four inputs, three of which are analog, user control is almost absolutely necessary. From left to right, the buttons on the Dell 2005FPW are identified as such: Input Select, Picture In Picture, Menu, Adjust down, Adjust up, and Power.
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Most of these are basically transplanted from the Dell 2001FP. The 2005FPW and 2001FP utilize the same inputs and, more or less, behave in the same manner with input selection. The real kicker to us came when we started playing around with the Picture In Picture button. Not only does Dell give us the opportunity to place an analog signal (S-Video, Composite) inside a D-sub or DVI signal, but they also allow us to go one step further and split screen (PBP - picture by picture) it as well! We lose a lot of desk space, but since the image can be swapped very quickly or screened from the control buttons, it is still very practical.
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The other key feature in the Dell 2005FPW interface is the scaling selector. Under Image properties in the Dell OSD, we were allowed to modify the scaling to 1:1 (excellent for gamers), Fit, or Aspect.
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sandys - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Oh yeah and as for panel manufacturer it can only be Samsung, not seen anyone else doing one. probably the ltm240w1http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/common/prod...
pure guesswork of course :p
Gatak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
#36, It is about contrast. The eyes are strained if you have a bright light in just a part of the field of view. The strain comes from having to both adjust for the bright light _and_ at the same time allow enough light to come from the darker areas. In other words it is difficult for the eyes to properly acclimate to the lighting situation.sandys - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Hi JNo,The 2405 can be bought in the UK, for some reason it is not showing on Dells site but you can still phone them and buy it so answers to questions
a) yes it supports 1:1 pixel mapping
b) it can be bought but price varies depending on offer at the time, I bought two and got one half price plus 20% off bring each to £540 which was a bargain, others have got around 600-693 for a single unit.
c) yes it can.
The 2405 also has component and I run my PS2 and xbox off of it, unfortunately we get stiffed a bit in the UK and box Sony and MS remove the useful progressive resolutions in place of interlaced so the only way to get a quality output on Xbox is to mod it and switch it to NTSC and for the PS2 buy US games or live with 576i :(
look here www.hdtvarcade.com
Cheers
xsilver - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
#31obviously to "fix" a dark room you just turn on the light... but I wanted to know more about the principles behind it.... what makes the monitor so different when its used in a dark room?
why is it so bad to turn down the brightness?
why does it hurt your eyes? (cause it doesnt hurt mine)
Zak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Doom3 and Trainz configs can also be edited to support 1680x1050.Zak
ir0nw0lf - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Don't forget that World of Warcraft natively supports 1680x1050!!bob661 - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
#21I won't buy a LCD either, yet. I do have a Viewsonic VP201b (supposedly the same panel as the Dell 2001FP) and it was VERY good playing UT2004 and Doom 3. I'll wait for two more generations of LCD AND then I'll some more for those to come down into the $300 range for a 19 or 20".
DestruyaUR - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Will these new 23 and 30" samples you speak of have HDCP circuitry so they could actually be used as TVs?Gatak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
#9: Easy to fix. Increase ambient light in the room. It is usually never good to work in a dark room. The "White" on the screen should also be the same color temperature as the ambient light.TinyTeeth - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Great review, but you really should use a better camera... :X