LCD monitors: Must run at max res to look good?

[flot]

A friend is looking at buying an 18.1" LCD monitor - which has a max resolution of 1280x1024. I pointed out to her that I believe this is the "correct" resolution, and that any other res will look odd on an LCD screen. (since the pixels are direct-mapped, right?)

I know this is how it 'used to be' and has been that way on most laptops -- does it still hold true?

Thanks!

 

[HaVoC]

You are right. Most LCD monitors have their "native" resolution which is a 1-1 correspondence with the actual pixels on the screen. Unlike CRT monitors, LCD monitors have fixed size pixels. Some of the better displays (such as my laptop display) perform filtering and resizing so odd resolutions don't look as bad. (though they are blurry)

Now some of the even better displays allow higher than native resolutions that let you scroll the screen to see the larger desktop area.

 

[Vegito]

Oh YEAH!

I have a 18.1 LCD, just 1" smaller than a 21" Viewsonic P815. If you run it at 1024x768, it looks like crap.. must run at 1280x1024x75Hz.