My wife uses our new macbook for her school work but now says she'd love a larger monitor for some of it.
Im not sure what to look for when buying a moniter...so is this one any good. Seems good for the price but wasnt sure if the specs are all that great.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7636034&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat104900050016&id=1134698030120
or
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7694514&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat104900050015&id=1138083961430
The 19-inch wide-screen's resolution is about typical of the 19-inch monitors. To get a higher resolution, you'd have to go with a 20-inch screen or larger (or find the rare 19-inch with a higher resolution).
But, with that said, I have a 19-inch Hanns.G JW199DP in silver. It has built-in speakers, and both DVI and VGA inputs. I'm currently using it with my Mac Mini G4 and using the DVI connection.
I'm very pleased with it, and would actually say it's comparable or better than the screen I had on my iMac G5. The clarity is great, it's bright enough to blind me first thing in the morning. And, I don't get any of the imperfections (image persistence, one screen burned-in completely and had to be replaced, and dark spots) that I used to see in the LCD panels in my old G5.
So, I am 200% pleased with this cheaper budget monitor. I actually plan to buy a second one for my other system. This monitor was only $200, and I got it for around $150 with a store coupon (the local Fred Meyer / Kroger had a $50 off coupon in the holiday paper for anything in the store over a certain dollar amount).
Unfortunately, Best Buy doesn't stock this monitor. But, I would not be scared-off from buying any budget priced LCD screen.
The specs on the one you are considering are reasonable. The only thing I see is the response time is 8ms. But, that's still a very good rate. If I remember right, mine is 4 or 5ms. Basically, the faster the better. But, 8ms is still pretty good.
If it were really slow, you might see some ghosting or trailing images as the screen tried to keep-up with fast moving video or games. But, with 8ms, I wouldn't expect that to me much of an issue.
As for the Westinhouse brand, I have no complaints there. I find that they are often selling televisions and such that are simply rebranded Emersons. And, I've always loved Emerson televisions. Very nice products. And, I've used a number of Westinghouse electronics when on the road at various bed-and-breakfast establishments. They've always seemed quite nice.
Of course, I haven't used the particular monitor you are looking at. But, I wouldn't be scared to buy it.
But, just to see what others are saying, it never hurts to punch the products brand and model number into the Google search engine to see what others are saying about it.
Perhaps do a search for:
'Westinghouse LCM-19W4 review'
Leave the ' marks as that will force the search engine to pull-up only pages that contain all those words.
You might also try omitting the - sign in the model number and using a space instead.
I hope this helps.
