Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I'm I big fan of my current T43 15" Flexview with the docking and the DVI output to my 1920x1200 Dell WFP. However the machine is to bulky for taking it with me all the time.

The Flexview screen is more then perfect but I think I'm willing to trade this in against a more portable machine.
The X60s would be my favorite choice but I'm hesitating because of the lack of a DVI output. So I have to use the analogue input.

I allmost sure it will work but is the external screen (allmost as good) then as with the DVI input? Otherwise I would go ahead with a T60 14" SXGA+. I can't compare them IRL with my 15" but it looks easier to travel with and less bulky.

So... has anybody expierience with connection a large (over 1600x1200) external TFT to a X60s.

Thanks, Jan

I don't have the combination you are looking at, but I can tell you that my X31 looks great on my Dell 2001FP 1600x1200 IPS display, connected through the standard analog VGA connector. Picture quality is excellent (to my eyes, at least!) and the X31 has no trouble keeping up with the display resolution.

I use Dell 2407 24" 1920x1600 LCDs with my X60 and it looks fine.

Is that a 1920x1200 wide-format display?

tomh009 wrote:Is that a 1920x1200 wide-format display?

Yes, 1920x1200

tomh009 wrote:I don't have the combination you are looking at, but I can tell you that my X31 looks great on my Dell 2001FP 1600x1200 IPS display, connected through the standard analog VGA connector. Picture quality is excellent (to my eyes, at least!) and the X31 has no trouble keeping up with the display resolution.

I think that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder

I have a small form factor Shuttle desktop with a dual headed DVI card, running two Dell 20" 2001FP monitors at 1600x1200. I also have a slightly older Dell 2000FP 20" monitor that is powered by a system I put together from old bits and pieces. This is to say that I have a bit of experience with these not-too-expensive 20" Dell LCDs, over several years.

I've compared, back and forth, what it looks like to drive these monitors through an analog signal and a DVI signal, with several systems (my desktops also including a former one, and my former T42 through a dock, switching the T42 to power through the dock's DVI and through the analog pass through).

In all cases I found the analog signal to produce a distinctly and obviously inferior screen image. It was so bad to my eyes that I could not tolerate it for even a few minutes. To me, it looks like running an LCD in a non-native resolution.

If you don't have good eyesight and if you don't spend a lot of time looking at DVI-driven LCDs, I think you might have the impression that an analog signal produces a good image on this type of monitor. On the other hand if you are used to using DVI, I think you will probably not like the Analog results.

dfumento wrote:I use Dell 2407 24" 1920x1600 LCDs with my X60 and it looks fine.

Same here. It looks fine even via the VGA port.

Ken Fox wrote:I think that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder

I didn't believe claims that DVI give better images than VGA until yesterday. I got a Dell 1707FP LCD monitor at work and connected its VGA cable to a Dell Pentium III desktop, and the DVI cable to a brandless P4 desktop. The VGA connection gave much fuzzier images. I get much nicer VGA-driven images from my T43, X60s and Dell Dimension B110 desktop. So, I think whether VGA works well depends on the machine and graphics card.

Ken Fox wrote:

tomh009 wrote:I don't have the combination you are looking at, but I can tell you that my X31 looks great on my Dell 2001FP 1600x1200 IPS display, connected through the standard analog VGA connector. Picture quality is excellent (to my eyes, at least!) and the X31 has no trouble keeping up with the display resolution.

I think that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder

Indeed ... hence my disclaimer.

I have no DVI output on the X31 to compare my monitor to, nor do I really wish to at the moment as it might make me unhappy with my current setup. But it is quite satisfactory to me, and certainly far better than running an LCD at a non-native resolution. Test patterns show some issues, yes, but text and images are crisp (to me). Now, I do wear glasses, so maybe that makes all the difference ...

Edit: One additional note: I am at least using a high-quality VGA cable with the monitor connection. Cheap cables produce terrible images regardless of the monitor type ...

pianowizard wrote: So, I think whether VGA works well depends on the machine and graphics card.

I'm sure that is important, but when I did the comparison with the T42 (Radeon 9600 64mb, I think) to a Dell 20" LCD, with the VGA and then the DVI, the difference was pretty obvious.

It all depends on what you are used to. Many people who have looked at my laptops think the print is too small and hard to read; when I look at theirs I think the screen (typically a 14" or 15" 768x1024) looks crappy in comparison to what I"m used to.

I was very myopic (~-7 diopters in both eyes) then had Lasik. I'm old enough to need reading glasses but I don't, and my close up vision remains like a typical myope; quite good. Large screens are meant to be viewed at a distance, but for computer work that's hard to arrange. 20" screens are big enough but not too big to be viewed at a distance of ~1.5 feet. I think that if you moved the screen a bit further back the differences between a great screen appearance and one that was merely acceptable would diminish, much in the way that conventional TV screens look awful close up but acceptable when you are at a distance.

First of all thanks for the prompt and founded replies. I read this forum for several months now and it's a pleasure to see so many professionals at this forum.

Because of the better TFT performance with DVI input I decided today to buy a new T43p (2668-PEG) which was a bargain in my opinion (1250USD).

Off course the 14” SXGA+ screen is not as beautiful as the 15" Flexview but it's much better as I thought it was. Actually the 14” screen looks more white then the Flexview screen. I use my laptop 80% with an external TFT so it made sense for me to choose the T43p instead of the X60s. And it’s nice to know (and see) that I have the best performance for my 24” TFT as possible.
The 14” is not as small and handy as the X60x but I like the size of the 14” much more then the 15” T-series. I know all Thinkpads are bricks but the 14” T43 is more an elegant kind of brick

Jan

Actually, it depends on the monitor.

Thouse of you reporting very bad image quality with VGA most likely have a monitor with both DVI and VGA inputs. And that manufacturer most likely didn't care much at all about image-quality on the VGA port.

Or, the VGA signal is the villain - however on a device only featuring VGA thats not often the case. Not with modern computers atleast, old graphic-cards do in greater extent have problems with high resolutions.

I can't comment on 1920x1200 and that resolution is pushing both DVI and VGAs limits a bit but I can say that on a display with 1680x1050 VGA is certainly enough.
But as said, many monitor-manufactures skip on the quality and therefore the image is sometimes much worse with VGA.

Someone referred to it as using the monitor at an non-native resolution and that for sure is not due to VGA itself but the monitor or the device.

May be to late for advice but if DVI and portability is cruicial you could always get an PCMCIA card with DVI.
Not certain that those can handle 1920x1200 but might be worth checking up.

When using VGA input, it's required to properly calibrate pixel phase, otherwise everything will look blurry, as if it ran non-native resolution.

Esben wrote:When using VGA input, it's required to properly calibrate pixel phase, otherwise everything will look blurry, as if it ran non-native resolution.

How do you calibrate pixel phase?

dfumento wrote:How do you calibrate pixel phase?

I think for the 2407WFP, you do it by pressing the "auto adjust" button. Some monitors have buttons that allow one to manually adjust the phase.