LCD Monitors - Wide screen vs Pivot

[dgravenor]

I am trying to decide on a new monitor for my girlfriend and her family, and haven't found much comparison between wide screen and pivoting monitors, or combinations of the technologies.

I would like to know what you have found with either of them, and perhaps suggest models that are good buys for the value.

They do not play games, and don't use their existing computer which has a DVD player as a DVD player. They do quite a bit of internet surfing and paper writing, so I was leaning to one with a pivot (meaning it can be rotated 90 degrees either clockwise or counter-clockwise to view more of the document), and I think that they would want good image quality over g2g or b2b response times.

I would think that a good combination would be a wide screen monitor with the ability to pivot.

The options I found for wide screen were:
Samsung SyncMaster 205BW
LG L194WTX-BF

And the only good options for pivot were:
Samsung 740B-HAS
Samsung 940B-HAS

Any advice or other options you guys would suggest?

 

[Noubourne]

My experience is that everyone in my family who is not a gamer or power user has purchased the cheapest most crap-ass 4:3 monitors known to man from the evil Wal-Fart, and been 100% satisfied with it.

When I go to their house and see the horrific color reproduction and piss-poor black levels which is obvious even just viewing web pages, they make me want to puke. I've calibrated them, and mucked with the settings, and it makes them better, but it's clearly crap imo. THEY COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH IT!!

Get them the cheapest WS from a local shop with a decent warranty and be done with it.

 

[InFeXiOn]

I'm going to have to agree with Noubourne on this one. Many friends and relatives of mine that are completely oblivious to technology and what you would consider a "quality" monitor are satisfied with the lowest-grade, cheapest, LCD that they could possibly find. Hit up Wal-Mart or look around for sales on monitors - who cares about the brand, take anything.

 

[Noubourne]

Originally posted by: InFeXiOn
I'm going to have to agree with Noubourne on this one. Many friends and relatives of mine that are completely oblivious to technology and what you would consider a "quality" monitor are satisfied with the lowest-grade, cheapest, LCD that they could possibly find. Hit up Wal-Mart or look around for sales on monitors - who cares about the brand, take anything.

I agree with you except the China-Mart part.

I said local "shop", not local "multinational slave-labor retailer". The idea was that they could drive it in if it breaks under warranty, which is probably more likely with no-name hardware.

 

[InFeXiOn]

Yeah, guess I should have thought about that because dealing directly with the manufacturer would definitely be a pain in the butt.

In regards to the pivoting, who really cares? Get them a cheap-o monitor, it'll do just fine for their purposes I think but I'll leave that up to you.

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Noubourne
My experience is that everyone in my family who is not a gamer or power user has purchased the cheapest most crap-ass 4:3 monitors known to man from the evil Wal-Fart, and been 100% satisfied with it.

When I go to their house and see the horrific color reproduction and piss-poor black levels which is obvious even just viewing web pages, they make me want to puke. I've calibrated them, and mucked with the settings, and it makes them better, but it's clearly crap imo. THEY COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH IT!!

Get them the cheapest WS from a local shop with a decent warranty and be done with it.

Now THAT is surprising. I was walking through a Staples the other day, and saw some ass looking hueg! bezel budget LCDs, and I was thinking, "they'll never sell those". Guess I'm wrong, thought that brand loyalty or brand confidense would steer people away.