Monitors - LCD Displays

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Monitors - LCD Displays

LCD Displays

-LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is becoming all the rage. I personally think they have a ways to go and are not all that great yet. The LCD screens work a good bit different from the CRT and address each pixel by its own dedicated circuit. If you want a screen for the office of just general computer use a LCD display may be acceptable. They do tower over regular CRT displays as far as power management, and space is concerned. If you have seen the flat panel display you may have started to drool. They look nice but be careful, they may not be for you. So now what are the different types of LCD screens and what do they do?

-The LCD displays comes in two flavors. Active and Passive Matrix. Which one is better choice for you?

-Passive Matrix, this is the low end of the LCD displays and is cheap. You may have had one on older laptops or even a handheld TV. They are okay but the screen can be hard to see and especially difficult if at an angle. What happens in this display is liquid crystals are lighted by sending intersecting charges from the horizontal and vertical edges of the screen. How much this charge is determines the color output of the pixel. Now because charges are sent across the screen to a individual pixels the display is usually not to great. Now later on they tried to change this and make it better by what is called dual scanning. This was basically to split the work up of the charges sent across the screen. This also allowed for the work to go faster and screen quality did improve. But to make a long story short, stay away from passive matrix screens. They are not better but worse no matter if they did incorporate dual scanning. They are not cheap for no reason.

-Active Matrix, this is found on almost all new laptops and flat displays monitors today. It is better that the Passive Matrix and offers a high end performance to far behind a good monitor. The only problem with these is that they are still a little behind on performance and the price is a little unreal. You may also see these displays called twisted film transistors or (TFT) displays. The trick behind these displays is the way the screen is updated. Unlike the Passive Matrix which sends a signal across the screen to charge a pixel, Active Matrix has a transistor for each pixel. This really speeds things up provides a great picture. Now, what if one of those transistors goes out? You have a blank spot on the screen. Does this happen very often is the question? I do know that many manufacturers have to refuse there display on the production line just because of handling. If you have a laptop with Active Matrix (very likely) , be careful with it! It doesn't take much to ruin a few transistors in it.

-Something else to consider when buying a Active Matrix Display for your desktop PC is price. These displays are not really that hot for gaming yet. If you want something pretty slick for the house and takes up very little room, go for the Active Matrix Flat Screen. If you are a gamer of want high end graphical representation then forget it. Its not up to date for those operations yet. At least from what I have seen. This is not to say right now they haven't came out with a better one by now.

Power Management

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