Monitor Advice

[BobJohnson]

Hi guys, my employer has kindly given me £500 to fix up a home office lol. Obviously within that I need a really good, sharp monitor that would be great to view my financial models on, but equally as good for processing photographs :p

I've previously held back on processing photos as I only have a laptop screen, meaning the colours etc aren't quite right. If I get a good monitor to view my pictures on, I think I'll be more inclined to see what I can do with them.

Can anyone recommend some good monitors available in the UK for around £150-£250 (I'll need the rest for a desk and chair!!).

Thanks

[DonSchap]

Bob,

I would suggest you consult with local retailers ... get a couple of opinion on recent devices that have been manufactured and then figure out a budget, because a good photography monitor can be a bit more costly than the standard device people dangle off their current PC. Also, consider getting a color management device to go with it ... so your colors are the same as other "calibrated" monitors.

[dr4gon]

What size are you looking for?

Do NOT get a TN panel!

[wutske]

Nowadays you'd expect all monitors come with a DVI (digital) connection, but it's not.
So make sure the monitor has a DVI and VGA connection (or even HDMI if your computers has one) because working on a 22" widescreen connected to a regular VGA port can be hard for the eyes.

[Don Kondra]

One thing I find annoying is how the screen size is marketed.

Widescreen, 16/10, 16/9, etc...

To compare the different sizes I was considering, ie., 22"/23"/24" I tracked down the actual screen measurements of each model and made a scale drawing. I included my existing 19" monitor. (Dell)

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I've just been through the "shopping for a new monitor" and the conclusions I've drawn are - an IPS panel is preferrable. The Dell 2209WA is an affordable choice. But, it is so popular it may not be in stock.

Supposedly if you order through the business section you will have a better chance. If not they are available new in box off ebay.com

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

I have the Dell 2209WA and it is awesome. Improved my post-processing quite a bit.
It's almost always out of stock though. I had to wait about 14 days to get mine.

[Don Kondra]

Where did you get it from Elisha ?

It is my understanding it is not available in Canada and dell.com (US) doesn't ship to Canada..

Cheers, Don

[shoeytennis]

I can help you if I knew what money that was lol.
Ill sum it up to be easy
22"
2ms
Make sure it has dvi and hdmi
Brand doesnt really matter IMO but to one its own.
PS- Also buy a Huey if you don't own one already.

[Elisha]

Where did you get it from Elisha ?

It is my understanding it is not available in Canada and dell.com (US) doesn't ship to Canada..

Cheers, Don

shoprbc.com
Based out of Ottawa i believe. they had a sale on it for $269 or $279 and i bought it from them.
too bad i missed out on the DELL SMB sale for $189.
It may not even be listed on the Dell Canada website anymore. Rumour is that they were discontinuing it but I think they just removed it cause of stock issues.

http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=55661

[dr4gon]

I can help you if I knew what money that was lol.
Ill sum it up to be easy
22"
2ms
Make sure it has dvi and hdmi
Brand doesnt really matter IMO but to one its own.
PS- Also buy a Huey if you don't own one already.

Actually, 2ms is a sign of a TN panel, terrible for viewing photos. HDMI isn't necessary either since DVI can easily be converted.

[shoeytennis]

Actually, 2ms is a sign of a TN panel, terrible for viewing photos. HDMI isn't necessary either since DVI can easily be converted.

HDMI is just nice to have is all haha. Youd be surprised how often youd use it.

[dr4gon]

HDMI is just nice to have is all haha. Youd be surprised how often youd use it.

You use it for a game console or something?

I can't really think of any advantages when I have a TV right next to me.

[Elisha]

HDMI makes no difference for photo editing.
May make a difference for video or games.

[Don Kondra]

shoprbc.com
Based out of Ottawa i believe. they had a sale on it for $269 or $279 and i bought it from them.

http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=55661

Now $369 + $16 for UPS Expedited shipping...

Thanx.

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

Now $369 + $16 for UPS Expedited shipping...

Thanx.

Cheers, Don

Yeah that's the regular price even when on Dell.ca.
It may go on sale again.
I ordered mine on July 4th and received it on the 14th after it went on backorder for a little bit. Their shipping is super fast as well. They shipped on the 13th and I got it on the 14th. Most likely since it was the same province. I choose UPS and it came FEDEX :D

[Don Kondra]

As I said, the 2209WA is not available from Dell.ca, where are you seeing it?

On Dell.com it's $289 US funds... and it was my experience you can not order on line for delivery to Canada.

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

As I said, the 2209WA is not available from Dell.ca, where are you seeing it?

On Dell.com it's $289 US funds... and it was my experience you can not order on line for delivery to Canada.

Cheers, Don

lol i said even when it was on Dell.ca
it's not been on Dell.ca for at least 2 months now I believe.
ShopRBC is the only place that has it.
You can also find ppl selling it used on FRD forums and Kijiji.

[Don Kondra]

LOL, I missed the "when" part :)

Sorry...

Cheers, Don

[SONYNUT]

last one i bought was a hp 26" for 250.00

[BobJohnson]

22" Dell 2209WA is £309 ($507) in UK.... crazy??

[EDIT] That was on the Dell site... available for £169 ($276) on non-Dell sites!!!

[Don Kondra]

So Bob, did you buy one ? :)

Mine arrived yesterday. Not on sale though, paid $369, sigh..

First impressions are good even before calibrating.

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

So Bob, did you buy one ? :)

Mine arrived yesterday. Not on sale though, paid $369, sigh..

First impressions are good even before calibrating.

Cheers, Don

Is it the 2209WA? Where did you get it from?

[Don Kondra]

Yup,

Ordered it online from shopRBC, thank you very much for that :)

Now I need to decide whether to keep my new Dell SP2309W, my desktop is looking rather decadent right now...

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

Have you tried forcing it to 75Hz yet?
It is capable of 75Hz according to the manual but you can't pick it by default in Display settings.

If you have a Nvidia card, just follow these instructions: http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=6077502&postcount=19

[Don Kondra]

No, have you?

Cheers, Don

[Elisha]

Yep it was one of the first things I did.
Not sure how much difference it makes for Image Editing but it is supposed to make a difference when it comes to gaming.

[Don Kondra]

No gaming here :)

I understand it's also easier on eye strain...

Cheers, Don

[BobJohnson]

Yeah I got it. Here inthe UK it was delivered in 20 hours lol. Unfortunately the graphics card on my laptop has melted. I received the hard drive and RAM back from the repair centre as the laptop is useless now. Had it for just over 2 years and paid £900 for it. Absolutely gutted. Apparently the problem of overheating is very common and is a coding problem with GeForce graphics cards. Disgraceful they can get away with it lol. So my spanking new monitor hasn't even had a picture through it yet. It still looks rather good onthe table though :)

[Don Kondra]

Yikes... that sucks

I guess this is redundant now but do you know if your laptop supports a remote monitor?

The reason I ask is I hooked up my three year old 19" Dell LCD monitor to my one year old Dell Inspiron 15" laptop and the picture quality was horrible, as in, unuseable...

Cheers, Don

[BobJohnson]

It did support a remote monitor, until the graphics card melted lol. Now it supports nothing :(

[Peekayoh]

Laptops are great for mobile computing, for everything else they are worse than useless.
Get yourself a desktop (term includes tower).

[BobJohnson]

yeah... now that my employer has kindly bought this monitor, im getting a desktop without a doubt... they've just given me a £1k bonus so im gonna use that to build one lol.

[Peekayoh]

WhoHoo! How much are you spending and do you need any advice?

[Elisha]

I need to rebuild my machine eventually and jump onto the i7 wagon with 6-12gb of ram.

[dr4gon]

I need to rebuild my machine eventually and jump onto the i7 wagon with 6-12gb of ram.

What do you have? What would i7 do that your machine can't? With my Q6600 and 8GB of ram (recently doubled for photoshop), I can handle all sorts of tasks. I don't see the need to upgrade CPUs (especially) any time soon.

[Elisha]

I've has a C2D E6600 and 4GB of Ram since December of 2006.
It's about time to upgrade.

[dr4gon]

I've has a C2D E6600 and 4GB of Ram since December of 2006.
It's about time to upgrade.

Even with the venerable E6600, you're still fine. You have a 64-bit OS to take full advantage of your RAM right?

[Elisha]

yep vista ultimate 64 bit.

[dr4gon]

bleh, you don't need to upgrade your computer! save up for lenses! ;)

[Peekayoh]

Bob, socket 775 with a Q6600 with GO stepping is pretty much guaranteed to give an easy overclock to 3.0GHz and probably 3.3GHz.
But with the slim price difference you're probably better off going for i5 technology right now. The O/C potential is still there.
The two velociraptor drives would be paired in Raid0 config to boost the disk subsystem.
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[BobJohnson]

*whoosh* that's the sound of your advice going over my head!!

I'm not a total computer noob but overclocking and disk subsystems are a little out of my league!! I can understand the rest of it in the main however.

The HD seems to be quite expensive for 300gb, is there a reason for that? I also like to do a spot of online gaming so will the graphics card give a decent output?

Thanks for your help

[Peekayoh]

The Western Digital Velociraptor is about the fastest HDD you can buy. Link two together in a Raid0 (striped) configuration and they work even faster.
This is important when you are dealing with large files because the Disk Subsytem is a bottleneck. The downside is that they are relatively small, however 300GB is plenty for working with current files with the 1TB drive providing longer term storage before archiving.

If you go down this route create three partitions P1=20GB (Swap and scratch), P2=50GB (Boot Drive) and P3 (Documents and Photos). This puts the windows swap file and adobe scratch files on the fastest part of the HDD (this is best regardless of which HDD's you go for).

A mild overclock with a decent mobo is not difficult and I'm sure we all can help out. I have a Q6600 running at 3.3GHz which is faster than the Q9650 at twice the price.

[BobJohnson]

I dont think a fast drive is so important to me as to spend £250ish on it to be honest!! I prob would be more than happy with the 1TB slower version as I don't really work with large files that require such speedy access to the HD. Even my photos are only around 4 meg a piece at the moment and the crappy laptop that just melted seemed to handle them very quickly indeed!!

[Elisha]

Or what you could do is get a 120GB or smaller Solid State Drive for your Windows installation and the other drives just for storage.
That will ensure Windows will boot lots faster and will have lots less lag when running apps as well.

My old E6600 has been running 3.6Ghz minimum non stop for almost 3 years now. In winter she runs at 3.8Ghz. Wanted to try Quad but when I was ready, the i7 came out so I'll just have to upgrade to that eventually.

[Peekayoh]

Yes, solid state Boot drives will become the norm but I'm not ready to make the jump yet. You really want an SLC-based flash drive and these are still ultra expensive. I'll give it another year for the technology to mature and the prices to come down. In the meantime a fast pair (or three) of Raptors in Raid0 will do me.

Bob, I think you'll change your mind when you switch to RAW but you can always do it a bit at a time. 1TB now and a RAID array or Flash drive later.

[Elisha]

SSD is coming down in price now that Intel has come up with a new technology to produce them for cheap. The prices have been dropping rapidly the last month.

[dr4gon]

Grab an intel X25-M (80GB) it's a great value right now. I wouldn't bother with 10k drives. The Intel MLCs are top notch.

[Peekayoh]

Write throughput is pretty important in post processing of RAW files when you can easily be juggling 200MB of data (more with the A900 RAW's) and the same, only more so, goes for audio/video editing and similar applications. When it comes to writing this data sequentially to a formatted drive, the X25-M doesn’t come close to a pair of 10k drives in RAID0 or even a single 15K drive.
The X25-M's replacement, the X25-E (using SLC technology) delivers more than twice the write throughput of it's predecessor but at a price (£600 in the Uk for a 64gig) and it still doesn't get to the write through performance of the hard drives, although it's much closer.

However, the flash drive does shine when it comes to loading the operating system and in random access intensive scenarios where it's incredibly low access time give it a big advantage over the HDD. In addition, the power consumption of these drives is a fraction of that of the HDD, so these drives will inevitably take over the server market and that's bound to have a positive affect on prices. The ideal solution is a flash drive for the Operating System with a 10K RAID handling your working files but, like I said, I'm not prepared to splash out £600 for the X25-E. But it will come down in price, at which time I can just add one to my system. Who knows, in five years time we may all be sporting Terrabyte flash drives in our PCs.

[dr4gon]

yeah I was thinking storing programs and the OS on the SSD and editing files from a regular hard drive. It should be plenty fast.

[BobJohnson]

Since we seem to have a few experts here...

I've been continuing my research into how to build a PC and am now onto the stage where I need to do the inital HDD partition and format.

Is it a good idea to partition part of the HD exclusively for the OS? I don't think I'm going to fork out for multiple hard drives just yet and am wondering whether it's worth partitioning the single HDD I get.

According to a guide I've been reading, for the initial partition and format it appears that I need a 'system disk' which will allow me to run the required commands. The guide detailed that this is a floppy disk lol. I don't even intend to have a floppy drive... is anyone aware of the modern day equivalent of this process?

[dr4gon]

No point really. Just keep it on one big partition. It's easier to work with.

When you install your OS, you format it then with the Windows CD.

[SONYNUT]

i can run hdtv out...great for macro...just pop it up on the 52"

[BobJohnson]

If I format it with thr CD doesn't that mean the DVD software would need to be installed first?

[PaulS]

I'd recommend to have a 2nd partition. It would really save a lot of headaches if any problems arose in the future. For example, if you store everything on the second and you get a virus it makes it a lot easier to reformat as you can just do C drive and D will still have all your documents ready to go. Otherwise you would have to take your harddrive out and plug it into another computer to backup... pretty troublesome, especially with laptops.

If you have 2 harddrives through it is probably unnecessary for the average user but i do it anyways because i don't put anything on the same partition as my os.

[BobJohnson]

can you recommend any guides then lol? every guide I read still uses Windows 98 wtc lol. Can't seem to find anything... modern!!

[PaulS]

I don't remember any of the exact words they use but when you put in the disc it has option for "custom install" which should give you an option somewhere saying "create partition" All you have to do is type in the amount you want for the partition and used the rest of the free space in your 2nd partition. Click on the first partition and click install or what ever. It's really simple once you've done it once of twice.

If you ever need to reformat you just put the disc in and get back to the screen with the partitions and delete/format the c drive and install over it again.

Also, i think if its the first time, you will have to format the 2nd partition inside windows which can be done by right clicking D drive > format

[Peekayoh]

Yes, you need to partition your hard drive both for best performance and for ease of recovery.
With a single HDD disk you're best with three partition like so...
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Partn S: is located at the beginning (the fastest part) of the drive and only contains the Windows Swap file and Photoshop Scratch files.
Partn C: the Boot drive contains only the O/S and Programs.
Partn D: contain only your data files.

If the boot drive becomes unuseable for whatever reason, the O/S can be reinstalled whilst holding your Data files untouched. You also have the option of taking a byte by byte backup of the C: partition for fast restoration to a working system.

This is somewhat complex to set up so you may want to consider a two disk solution especially when a small SATA drive costs less than £30.
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As has been said, you only need the Windows installation disk to create partitions. The how depends on whether it's XP or Vista and the size of the S: and C: partns depends on which O/S and how much RAM you have.