Thinkpads Forum

I purchased 2 new wide-screen monitors (Dell u2312hm, 1920x1080). They have DVI-D, VGA and DisplayPort connectors.

I plugged them to the docking station for my Lenovo T61 laptop. Docking station has 1 DVI out and 1 VGA out, so I had to use DVI cable for one monitor and VGA for another.

After doing auto-adjust twice on monitor connected via VGA picture is now just as sharp as on one connected via DVI. However, brightness on monitor connected via VGA is a bit less and white color has very slight yellowish tint.

I adjusted brightness to match but don't want to mess with color balance on the monitor itself.

I don't really do any color-critical work (and this monitor is not suitable for it anyway) but would like to fix color discrepancy just because I want to. I realize that discrepancy can be between the monitors themselves and will check it later today by connecting both of them to my old desktop with dual DVI graphics but for now let's assume monitors are the same color-wise.

I am thinking of getting a cable that will allow to connect VGA out on the dock to DVI input on the monitor directly. However, I am not sure where color tint is introduced. If it is introduced in the dock then I am SOL. But if it is in the cable or monitor then new cable may help.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Congratulations on your monitors - they are good ones.

About the tint - My ATI-equipped T60 used to give very heavy yellow tint just on the VGA port. The culprit turned out to be in the driver settings - for some reason it set the color temperature just on the VGA port to 4000K, compared to the standard 6500K.

Yours is a completely different machine, so I don't know what the odds are of it being the same issue, but you can check fairly easily by looking into the video driver settings. Does your VGA-connected monitor exhibit the tint in the BIOS or in a full screen command prompt window? Mine didn't (this how I first realized it was a settings issue).

You can also check what happens if you connect the same monitor to a different PC using VGA, or to the VGA connector on the laptop chassis instead of the one on the dick.

Finally, a cable converting VGA to DVI will not work (as is, you won't even get a picture). It cannot be a simple cable, it has to be an active converter. That's because I'm pretty sure that your monitor (like 99% of the monitors out there) can only accept digital signals through the DVI input, not analog ones.