Yet another thread about dot pitch

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kasakka

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I've currently got two monitors: a Lenovo L220X and a Viewsonic VP2130. The Viewsonic is 21.3", 1600x1200, 4:3 and the Lenovo is 22", 1920x1200, 16:10.

The only thing that bothers me about the Lenovo is that due to its smaller panel it has a finer dot pitch, 0.250. The Viewsonic is 0.270 and I find that text is more comfortable to read on it. Since I've got more monitors than outputs (got a HDTV as well and my mobo only takes 1 PCI-E x16 card) I was considering going to a single 30" monitor, until I realized that it also has a 0.250 dot pitch.

So essentially what I'm asking is would I simply have the exact same "too small text" problem with a 30" but with more desktop space? Would I be better off with a 24" screen if the Viewsonic feels better to my eyes?
 
I guess "dot pitch" is what I am also complaining about here too:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1385503

Maybe our threads can be merged.

I am thinking it's the distance between pixels, not the pixel size that is bothering us in reality.

A 22" at 1920x1200 you could turn on large fonts to move to 120dpi vs 96dpi and make the characters have more pixels at the same general size. That's the visible size of the FW900 and I had large fonts set on that which worked great for clarity.
 
Yes, you'll have the same too small text problem. I would choose an 1920x1200 28" monitor in your place.
You can also increase the font sizes in your browsers.
 
I've been playing with the DPI sizes in Win7 beta and the scaling does seem to work fairly well in it, though 120 DPI is definitely too big. It may be that the smaller vertical size along with the different aspect ratio and smaller text is what makes the 22" Lenovo feel more cramped compared to the 21" Viewsonic.

I don't think I'd like a larger dot pitch than .270 because then you start to see the the actual pixels. For comparison I've also got the afore-mentioned 40" FullHD TV and there you can really see the pixels if you're close enough and using something like a web browser.

So maybe in the end a 30 incher set to a higher DPI would be the bees knees. Dealing with more than two monitors is a bit of a pain in the ass.

vibe, it's probably not the distance between pixels (since they are so close together you can't really see the gaps until you put your nose to the screen) but the difference in sharpness. CRTs are always slightly less sharp whereas LCDs are always totally exact and subpixel smoothing doesn't have the same effect as the smoothing caused by the CRT technology. You could try installing Safari on Windows because thanks to Apple's arseholeness it uses the same font smoothing as OSX, which is a bit less sharp because it works differently. See if you enjoy the letters more with that.
 
In vista (and xp somewhere too surely), you can change all text in the OS to 120dpi up from 96. Makes everything much more readable.

I do this even on my 24" 1920x1200, .27 dot pitch iirc.
26 and 27 inchers are also 1920x1200 with a bigger dot pitch.
 
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