While I’m on the subject of desktops (the visual kind, anyway), I suppose it bears mentioning that I finally upgraded my display. You see, a while back my old 17 inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor began to get a little… fuzzy. Granted, it was a few years old (okay, like 6 years old) and I was running my desktop at the ungodly resolution of 1280×1024, so it was no surprise that it was having trouble keeping up. And since I had recently gotten a new 19 inch LCD screen at work, I figured it was time to upgrade my home one as well. I borrowed a 17 inch LCD screen for a while, just to get by (LCD screens were still too expensive for me at the time) – and that was pretty good. I mean, 17 inches of LCD is great compared to 17 inches of CRT. However, eventually I had to give it back – and so I was stuck with my CRT again for a few days. YIKES! What a shock! The edges of the screen seemed to be receding into infinity, compared to the flat perfection of LCD. Needless to say, I went out hunting for a good deal on a new LCD right away. And it just so happened that last week there was a sale, and I managed to get my hands on a 19 inch LCD screen for just $169.
Yep, 19 inches of LCD glory – and let me tell you, I’ll never go back.
Incidentally, 19 inches is all I can fit in my desk at the moment – a bigger screen literally won’t fit. The 19 inch LCD has just 1/2 of an inch clearance on the left and right sides, so this is as big as I can get for now – until I upgrade my desk in a few months (hopefully at the same time I move out of Fitchburg – but that’s a story for another post).
So all I need now is a new TV tuner card for my computer – one that is compatible with Windows XP Media Center Edition (my old one from 2000 is obviously not fully compatible) – and I’ll be golden. Watching TV in bed never looked so good!
