800x600 Resolution

[Vcize]

My mom is in the market for a new 19" monitor. She's not exactly a spring chicken, you know how it goes with the eyes once you hit 50 years old.

On her current 17" monitor, she heavily prefers 800x600 resolution, as she has trouble with anything higher. So, in her new 19" monitor, I realize the actual viewable screen will be larger, but she wants to make sure 800x600 is still an option.

The trouble is that 99% of the time only the max resolution is listed in the monitor specs, not the range of all resolutions supported. Would a new 19" monitor, particularly the one listed below, support 800x600 resolution?

Here is the link to the monitor:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=24-002-037&depa=0

Also, she won't be using the monitor for gaming or anything of the like, so is this monitor a little extravagant? She wants to make sure it's a good quality crisp monitor, but if there's something that will provide great quality for cheaper and the only downfall is in gaming then that may be a better option, does anyone have any in mind?

Thanks.

 

[Matthias99]

I use a similar NEC 19" at work (not the same model, but in the same line), and it supports 800x600 just fine. Generally, CRTs have no problem going down to lower resolutions. I mean, a lot of fairly recent games still have cutscenes rendered at, say, 320x240...

 

[Marsumane]

Yes, i havent seen a CRT monitor that didnt support 800x600

 

[JackHawksmoor]

Your only trouble is with LCDs. They'll support lower resolutions, but the image dosen't look as good. That's why I don't want a higher resolution than 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor. That resolution makes for pretty "normal" sized text (and increasing font sizes in Word and Mozilla help), and I wouldn't want anything higher resolution. At least not until they figure out a way to do perfect resolution scaling.

 

[BFG10K]

All CRTs can basically run as low as 320x240. The only limit to desktop resolutions is Windows XP's 800x600 but even that can be changed to 640x480 if you so desire.

 

[boran]

pixels as HUUGE as a house, but yes all CRT's will do 800x600, on a 19 inch I'd seriously considder 1024x768 at least, most websites are made for that res nowadays too, and the ppi will be about the same (pixels per inch)

 

[VirtualLarry]

As an easy way to test "how low can you go" with CRTs.. aside from a monitor-testing program like PowerStrip, you could also download MAME (an arcade-game emulator), and some of the older games to go with it. Many of them ran at resolutions like 256x224 (Pac-Man maybe?), and as long as you disable hardware stretching in MAME, then it will attempt to set a low-res DirectX mode to match the original res of the arcade game, which works fine on all multi-sync monitors that I've ever used. However, the pixels will look pretty darn huge at that low a res on a 19" screen. Be prepared for jaggies!

 

[eLiu]

I've never seen a CRT that can't do 800x600...

Though, she could run at higher resolutions and just have windows jack up the font sizes. You can also modify the size of windows, windows toolbars, etc in appearances. Most everything can be increased in size to make it more readable. I did this for a guy at my office who got a new 20" LCD (1600x1200), but complained about it being unclear (b/c he ran in 1024x768 mode). So I told him to raise the resolution & showed him how to modify windows to make everything look bigger. This might be something you want to do on a big CRT to make everything look more crisp.

-Eric

 

[JBT]

I would use the res that is optimal for the monitor and then increase the font size and icon size until they are to her liking.