Basic questions about T42/Radeon 9600 and external monitors

[helicopter]

Hi,

I'd possibly like to connect my T42 to an external LCD monitor. The Thinkpad runs XP Pro and has the Radeon 9600. A few years ago I installed a new motherboard, which came with that more powerful video card/chip.

Here's what I'm trying to do. Recently I was working in a library on an iMac with a 21.5" display. It was big enough that I could display a photograph of a document on one side, while I could have a window open on the other side to take notes. I checked the settings and saw it was running at 1920 x 1080. I thought, "This would be a much better way to work, if I could do this at home." The Thinkpad's current resolution of 1024 x 768 is too small to do this, especially when I have to enlarge the photos of the documents to read them. (Some are handwritten.)

I found this forum thread which says I can get 2048x1536 through the VGA port.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... al+monitor

But it looks like most monitors now have DVI connections. Does that mean I'd need to get a Docking Station (version II)? If I did, would I be able to get the right drivers to get something that approximates 1920 x 1080? (Bigger is OK.)

I don't really understand the problem of the desktop area being bigger than what the monitor displays-- except that I want to avoid that, since I don't want to have scroll back and forth to see the full desktop.

Finally, I don't understand some threads I came across that said people tried higher resolutions and they were blurry or the text was too large. The programs I use (Photoshop and Word) allow you to scale the images/text. But I've noticed that with Photoshop, the images look clearer when they are at 25, 50, and 100%, rather than 33, 66%, etc. Maybe this is a separate issue. I just don't want to invest in a docking station and new monitor and then find out that the images are not crisp-- again, since I'm trying to read photos of handwriting.

Thanks,

Mark

[dr_st]

Most monitors today (at least those at resolutions 1920x1200 and below) still have VGA connections as well. Thus you can just connect your laptop's VGA port and it should just work.

VGA can be somewhat less sharp than digital connections on high resolutions, but usually not to the point of being bad/unusable. As long as you use a good cable, and there is no interference (e.g., cable touching other cables), you should be fine. And if you are not satisfied, then you can get a docking station.

I haven't had problems outputting to monitors of various resolutions with the T42. Make sure to always run at the monitor's native (maximum) resolution. Otherwise, the text will be blurry (due to the monitor performing interpolation).

[pianowizard]

I don't really understand the problem of the desktop area being bigger than what the monitor displays-- except that I want to avoid that, since I don't want to have scroll back and forth to see the full desktop.

Your T42 won't have such a problem for 2048x1152 or lower resolutions, e.g. 1920x1200, 1920x1080, 1600x1200, etc. Trust me on this, because I owned a T42 for about three years and used it with more external monitors than I can count. So, make sure you get a monitor that doesn't exceed 2048x1152.

VGA usually works okay, as long as you push the monitor's "Auto Adjust" button the first time you hook it up, so that the image is properly aligned within the monitor. Many people don't know about this button, and they complain about VGA connections being fuzzy. I have come across a few VGA-driven monitors that show shadows around text, probably because these monitors were designed to be optimized for digital input (i.e. DVI, DisplayPort or HDMI), but such shadows aren't very obvious at normal viewing distances. So, I advice you not to rush out and buy a docking station yet.

[helicopter]

Thanks for the info. I understand what you're saying about native resolutions not exceeding 2048x1152 and using the auto adjust button. And I understand the advice about a good cable without interference.

Now the trick is to find some models, price them, etc. I see that you pay about $100 just to get a monitor whose height you can adjust!

But I digress from the fact that this is supposed to be a T4xx forum.