I recently contemplated on buying an iMac desktop. I wanted the extra screen real estate and convenience of desktop use (bigger keyboard mouse better ergonomics ect).
Those iMac refurbs they have at the online applestore were so tempting, but I realized that my wife also has a macbook so whole new computer is just redundant.
So i decided to just buy a large external monitor and use a previously purchased (and embarrassingly unused) apple BT mighty mouse and keyboard with it. I even had some left over harman/kardon champaign speakers for the complete desktop experience.
I decided on the Samsung SyncMaster 2343BWX 23" monitor.
-it had a very reasonable price ($220 on Newegg) considering the specs.
-it was unique in that it was sized in a 23" 16:9 ratio with a 2048x1152 resolution
-according to some obscure forums (Costco and another music forum) it was compatible even with older macbooks.
So i took a leap of faith and ordered it from newegg. A side note about newegg: like amazon one of their main warehouses is in New Jersey so living in NYC orders arrive quickly - sometimes within a business day. Ordering from them with their rock bottom prices and free shipping is a no brainer.
yes this macbook model (blackbook c2d 2.0 with 3gigs ram and 320gig HD) works with the samsung in full native resolution 2148x1152.
Although specs say otherwise I get the full native resolution 2148x1152 and even that resolution with the extended monitor mode. The screen real estate is epic to begin with in extended monitor mode using the macbooks screen even more so.
With the 2028x1152 resolution the text is quite small. You can even fit two whole 8.5x11" (letter sized documents) on the screen with some extra space left over.
Watching movies/dvds in the 16:9 ratio is awesome. I'm not into gaming so I can't comment on how the screen works with games. I subscribe to MLB.TV and with a fast internet connection the full screen mode in HD is awesome. Here is a Hockey game in HD using elgato eyeTV software and a hauppage tv converter.
Using my older macbook in clamshell mode is great. Especially since i can finally really use my previously useless apple BT mouse and keyboard. The added bonus is that my brother in law had left a whole old dell system that had some pretty good speakers (harmam/kardon champaign speakers) which were to my surprise 2.1 ready! So I could already do 5.1 sound right out of the macbook earphone jack (which is a very underrated aspect of the macbook line, having the 5.1 output conveniently right out of the optical headphone jack -all the way back in their 2006-2007 models). It was a stroke of genius on apple's part.
So with the extra screen space you can now super clutter your desktop even more so!
There were some isssues:
something on my computer glitched after initial use with this monitor. The external monitor would only show black if in mirrored or clamshell mode. In effect I was forced to permanately use it in extended desktop mode (which wasn't really a problem considering I still got the native 2048x1152 resolution on the external AND the macbook monitor.
I tried calling applecare hotline (about 4 times) and they couldn't figure it out. Eventually someone on the apple.com support site figured it out completely
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9457156#9457156
(this actually may solve a lot of problems with other monitors too!)
- On safari watching video streaming sites like hulu and ABC's episode player in full screen can be choppy. I tried these using firefox and that solved the problem.
Also I use a tv tuner to watch cable and use the DVR functions and it plays well (even with the HD signals) in a separate window but in full screen it gets choppy. You can fix this perfectly by adjusting the resolution to 1920x1080 before going into full screen. Once adjusted the HD TV streams are crystal clear and in native 16:9 ratio. I have a feeling this is due to the underpowered graphics card in my old model macbook.
I guess thats it. I was really a unexpected surprise to see that even older model macbooks like mine exceeded its projected performance. And kudos to apple to providing such a convenient way to stream 5.1 sound right out of the optical headphone jack. With all these new macbooks coming out its comforting to know that my old macbooks does an great job as a portable and now a desktop.
Those iMac refurbs they have at the online applestore were so tempting, but I realized that my wife also has a macbook so whole new computer is just redundant.
So i decided to just buy a large external monitor and use a previously purchased (and embarrassingly unused) apple BT mighty mouse and keyboard with it. I even had some left over harman/kardon champaign speakers for the complete desktop experience.
I decided on the Samsung SyncMaster 2343BWX 23" monitor.
-it had a very reasonable price ($220 on Newegg) considering the specs.
-it was unique in that it was sized in a 23" 16:9 ratio with a 2048x1152 resolution
-according to some obscure forums (Costco and another music forum) it was compatible even with older macbooks.
So i took a leap of faith and ordered it from newegg. A side note about newegg: like amazon one of their main warehouses is in New Jersey so living in NYC orders arrive quickly - sometimes within a business day. Ordering from them with their rock bottom prices and free shipping is a no brainer.
yes this macbook model (blackbook c2d 2.0 with 3gigs ram and 320gig HD) works with the samsung in full native resolution 2148x1152.
Although specs say otherwise I get the full native resolution 2148x1152 and even that resolution with the extended monitor mode. The screen real estate is epic to begin with in extended monitor mode using the macbooks screen even more so.
With the 2028x1152 resolution the text is quite small. You can even fit two whole 8.5x11" (letter sized documents) on the screen with some extra space left over.
Watching movies/dvds in the 16:9 ratio is awesome. I'm not into gaming so I can't comment on how the screen works with games. I subscribe to MLB.TV and with a fast internet connection the full screen mode in HD is awesome. Here is a Hockey game in HD using elgato eyeTV software and a hauppage tv converter.
Using my older macbook in clamshell mode is great. Especially since i can finally really use my previously useless apple BT mouse and keyboard. The added bonus is that my brother in law had left a whole old dell system that had some pretty good speakers (harmam/kardon champaign speakers) which were to my surprise 2.1 ready! So I could already do 5.1 sound right out of the macbook earphone jack (which is a very underrated aspect of the macbook line, having the 5.1 output conveniently right out of the optical headphone jack -all the way back in their 2006-2007 models). It was a stroke of genius on apple's part.
So with the extra screen space you can now super clutter your desktop even more so!
There were some isssues:
something on my computer glitched after initial use with this monitor. The external monitor would only show black if in mirrored or clamshell mode. In effect I was forced to permanately use it in extended desktop mode (which wasn't really a problem considering I still got the native 2048x1152 resolution on the external AND the macbook monitor.
I tried calling applecare hotline (about 4 times) and they couldn't figure it out. Eventually someone on the apple.com support site figured it out completely
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9457156#9457156
(this actually may solve a lot of problems with other monitors too!)
- On safari watching video streaming sites like hulu and ABC's episode player in full screen can be choppy. I tried these using firefox and that solved the problem.
Also I use a tv tuner to watch cable and use the DVR functions and it plays well (even with the HD signals) in a separate window but in full screen it gets choppy. You can fix this perfectly by adjusting the resolution to 1920x1080 before going into full screen. Once adjusted the HD TV streams are crystal clear and in native 16:9 ratio. I have a feeling this is due to the underpowered graphics card in my old model macbook.
I guess thats it. I was really a unexpected surprise to see that even older model macbooks like mine exceeded its projected performance. And kudos to apple to providing such a convenient way to stream 5.1 sound right out of the optical headphone jack. With all these new macbooks coming out its comforting to know that my old macbooks does an great job as a portable and now a desktop.
