Thinkpads Forum

With XP support ending shortly, I guess it's time for a new laptop.

I'm going to get either a t400, or a t410.

One thing causing me trepidation, is what will happen when I hook up my old crt (1024*768 native res., but I usually use 800*600 - I like to sit far away from the screen) monitor through the vga port on either one of these laptops. The laptops are widescreen, and the old CRT is not, obviously.

Will I be left with black bars on the top and bottom? I'll likely be running windows 7. Does windows 7 even give the option for 800*600 resolution?

You can set independent resolutions for the internal LCD and the external monitor. And yes, 800x600 is supported by Win7.

Not sure how good it is for your eyes to be working with something that's obviously a very old CRT display.

It will work, but Win7 will squawk about being under 1024x768, since some of the dialogs aren't made for that low of a resolution.

Thanks to both of you. I guess if it's supported, it'll be useable at least. Maybe not ideal though.

dr_st wrote:Not sure how good it is for your eyes to be working with something that's obviously a very old CRT display.

It's been a while since I tried a LCD, but at the time, I didn't like them. Long sessions made my eyes hurt. The colors on a CRT look better to me. Maybe things have changed though.