Sorta like 800 x 600 on 19 in WS

[bc4]

Hello everyone,

I have a pretty simple question I need help on to help out my 68 year old dad.

He sets his monitor resolution to 800 x 600 because everything appears larger and he is able to read it more clearly. We all know that web apps are moving away from that standard and albeit he is bright on most things the scroll bars are not one of them.

How would I calculate what resolution on a 19 wide screen would give him similar "appearance" to what he sees on his 800 x 600 now? (oh yeah, that 8 x 6 is on a standard 17".... one crt, one lcd dual setup.)

Thanks all for the help, his b-day is coming up and I'd like to replace his old crt with 19 ws if I can figure this out


ps, sorry to put this in the GF section but I don't know how to move it now

 

[aadamszc]

Ermmm...I would assume it would just be best to change the resolutions and see which one is the best for him.

 

[rolli59]

they 19" wide is very simular in height to the 17" so somewhere close to 960x600. the only problem is that lcd are always sharpest at native res. so if you could find a 22" lcd with 1440x900 he would get more out of it.

 

[bc4]

Thanks rolli --- 22's are probably out of my price range but I might be able to get some help on that. I'll check to see what resolutions are supported on the 19's

 

[smokedyou911]

As said above, lcds look best in native res. You can also run them at half their native resolution and they will look as good, but in a much lower res.

 

[Schmide]

1) Get your pa the best LCD you can afford. If you look around, 22" 1680x1050 LCDs can be found for near $200. Work your black Friday.

2) Run it at it's native resolution.

3) Change your default fonts to a Large or Extra Large Font Set/Large Icons/ Clear Type Smoothing (I personally don't like CTS)

4) Teach you Pa how to use the ctrl-mouse wheel page zoom. IE7 works best without a doubt. I think Opera is also good. This is the one thing FireFox sucks at, Zooming! You can download "No Squint" but it doesn't work as well. They promised to fix this in FireFox3. If he uses applications like Word, etc. Teach him how to zoom in each of the applicatinos. (Microsoft Word uses the same ctrl-mw zoom.)

5) Give him a shortcut to the magnifier if he still needs it.

 

[runswindows95]

<seconds Schmide's advice.

 

[azimuth40]

If you have IE 7 installed look at the lower right corner and there is a pull down to let him adjust the magnification. It should go from 50 to 400 percent along with a custom option at the bottom of the pull down menu. I am running Vista but I do not think it is Vista specific. For XP or Vista right clicking on the desktop should lead you to an option to change font size for everything else from 96dpi to 120dpi. For Vista it is in the upper left corner of personalize and for XP it is someplace on one of the theme pages. On 22 inch native LCD's quite a few of us old guys have to change a few things because of native resolutions so I can imagine the same would be true on a CRT. Unfortunately 1024 is becoming the normal even for software not just the web.

Wish dear old Dad luck.

Edit: Oh if you do teach him how to use ctrl-mw then also teach him about mousewheel click to get the all points scroll turned on so that the elevator bars don't drive him nuts.

 

[CNeufeld]

My advice is don't go to a 20" widescreen. Go to a 22" if you're going to go bigger than a 19". That's because they run at the same native resolution, but the 22" is a little bigger.

The 19" monitors run at a native resolution of 1440x900. If you take the viewable height/width and divide that by the resolution in that direction, you'll get an pixels/inch measure. Do the same for your Dad's 17" monitor, and you'll get an idea of how they compare.

Keep in mind that there are things you can change to improve the readability without changing off the native resolution. Do NOT plan on running it in a non-native resolution.

Clint

 

[Schmide]

After doing some research. FireFox add on MouseZoom works kind of well. A little confusing with the hold right mouse + mouse wheel interface, but I like it. Allows me to lean back in my chair and still read really small text without killing the format of the page. You may have to reload some pages to get it to look right.

 

[bc4]

Thanks guys and gals--- lots of good info.

He now runs his Sony LCD at 8 x 6 so he doesn't care about native reso....
I agree with everyone on this but no use convincing him.
Hasn't every version of Firefox had the control -wheel thingy to zoom?

The problem is scott-trade --- live stock quotes. its a java based pop up window and it won't zoom (i'll double check this later)

He still uses a good ol' 16 bit app for contact management and a lot of the XP controls for larger fonts don't work on that so it is best for him to play with the resolution.

cheers

 

[evongugg]

Another thing you could do that might help him is use large icons on the desktop, in control panel->display properties.