UPGRADING Monitors

Upgrading your monitor may be a simple task, if you have the proper video controller card already installed in your PC!

First, why spend money to upgrade your monitor. You cannot realize any return for your old monitor, and it may cost a few hundred dollars for a new monitor. Well, let me stop being facetious and lets think about these points:

  1. My current monitor seems too small to adequately display many graphics that I use.
  2. My old monitor is several years old, and everything appears 'grainy', text is hard to read, etc. Dot pitch is too high.
  3. My eyes are deteriorating, and I need larger images with greater clarity.
  4. My current video card cannot efficiently put graphics and multimedia on my screen.
  5. I just want something newer and better!

These are all valid reasons, and you can probably think of more, especially those of you who like video games. Just remember that if you get a new SVGA or better screen, it will cost you serious dollars. Your old video adapter card may be inadequate to handle newer monitors so you may also need a "video adapter card" with up to 4 MB video memory, and the associated drivers for the card.

When you purchase a new monitor, you will probably need to reconfigure your display if you are using Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, or Windows NT. We usually do this by going to the "Control Panel" program group, clicking on the "Display" icon, and then clicking on the "settings" option. For my "Vivitron 17" monitor with Windows NT Workstation, I select the 256 colors, and an 800x600 pixel size, and a refresh of 60 hertz.

Selecting the proper color, size, and refresh rate is critical. Many times, our experience is that Windows NT on some monitors causes miniture screen displays, double displays, and blank screens until we get the color, size and refresh rate correct.

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