bmw
February 6th, 2005, 20:19
Just a heads-up to anyone looking for a good quality LCD display for not a huge amount of cash. I got one of these at work and I liked it so much I bought one for home. I needed an LCD to dock my PowerBook to so I wouldn't strain my eyes so much trying to use the 12" screen all day.
The Dell 1704FPV is 1280x1024, has both DVI and VGA (front-panel switchable), impressive contrast of 1000:1, good brightness (280 nits) and respectably fast pixel response. Mechanically, it has nicely balanced height adjustment and the entire screen rotates 90 degrees for accessing cables and connectors. I imagine you could also switch the video mode from landscape to portrait (1024x1280), but I can't seem to do that with my PB (no Mac OS X driver provided).
The black front bezel is quite slim and not dominated with a big round Dell logo like their earlier models. Four small recessed silver buttons control on-screen-display, VGA/DVI, "auto-adjust" (figures out the best image placement and size for the provided signal), and power.
But the thing that blew me away was that by ordering this at www.dell.ca, with a 15% discount (first online order), I paid $381 Can (under $300 US). There's nothing else in that LCD product range comparable to it. All other DVI-equipped LCDs start around $600 Can. and go up from there.
In use, the video is super bright and sharp. Movies play back on it just fine, and it has a bunch of extra USB plugs (4) so you can attach a keyboard and mouse and your camera to it (very handy).
I've used both of my monitors (home and work) for over a week now and about the only complaint I have is that when you pull out the DVI connector, it neither switches to the VGA input nor goes into sleep mode (it stays in test mode with a coloured menu floating around forever). But you can switch it over manually to the other input with a single button-push, so that's not a big deal.
It comes with drivers for Windows, and colour profile config files for Windows and Mac OS X. I think this would be an ideal monitor for a Mac Mini; it's certainly perfect for my software developing and web surfing needs.
Highly recommended!
The Dell 1704FPV is 1280x1024, has both DVI and VGA (front-panel switchable), impressive contrast of 1000:1, good brightness (280 nits) and respectably fast pixel response. Mechanically, it has nicely balanced height adjustment and the entire screen rotates 90 degrees for accessing cables and connectors. I imagine you could also switch the video mode from landscape to portrait (1024x1280), but I can't seem to do that with my PB (no Mac OS X driver provided).
The black front bezel is quite slim and not dominated with a big round Dell logo like their earlier models. Four small recessed silver buttons control on-screen-display, VGA/DVI, "auto-adjust" (figures out the best image placement and size for the provided signal), and power.
But the thing that blew me away was that by ordering this at www.dell.ca, with a 15% discount (first online order), I paid $381 Can (under $300 US). There's nothing else in that LCD product range comparable to it. All other DVI-equipped LCDs start around $600 Can. and go up from there.
In use, the video is super bright and sharp. Movies play back on it just fine, and it has a bunch of extra USB plugs (4) so you can attach a keyboard and mouse and your camera to it (very handy).
I've used both of my monitors (home and work) for over a week now and about the only complaint I have is that when you pull out the DVI connector, it neither switches to the VGA input nor goes into sleep mode (it stays in test mode with a coloured menu floating around forever). But you can switch it over manually to the other input with a single button-push, so that's not a big deal.
It comes with drivers for Windows, and colour profile config files for Windows and Mac OS X. I think this would be an ideal monitor for a Mac Mini; it's certainly perfect for my software developing and web surfing needs.
Highly recommended!