Softening the Edges of Technology 122
Tired of the generic grey boxes that fill corporate offices? A New York Times piece looks at the efforts by some hardware resellers to soften the edges of the PC with elements from nature. The piece goes over the efforts of places like Suissa Computers, which offers 'desktop computers in cases of oak, walnut, zebrawood, purpleheart, mahogany, maple and leopardwood'. Likewise, Holzkontor of Neustadt and the company Wood Contour offers keyboard and monitor sets that adds a naturalistic touch to the average soulless desktop setup. They don't just touch on commercial options, talking briefly about homebrew case-mods: "Nicholas Falzone, 20, a third-year architectural student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is just putting the finishing touches on the second computer case he's made. 'It's taken me at least a thousand hours,' he said. The case has an aluminum interior frame to support the computer workings. The outer frame is made of koa and maple. Mr. Falzone did the rough cuts with a table saw; after that, almost all the work was done with hand tools. 'Each joint has multiple mortises and tenons,' he said. 'I didn't use any screws or glue.'" Interesting to see the beautification of PC cases in the pages of the old grey lady.
Only with some kinds (Score:5, Informative)
TN (Twisted Nematic) are the original LCDs. They are cheap and thus common but have the worst image in terms of viewing angle and colour.
VA (Vertical Alignment) panels aren't as common as TN, but still pretty easy to find. New ones (usually called P-MVA or S-PVA) have very wide viewing angles, though you do notice a little colour shift off axis. They also have the best block point of any LCD technology and vastly improved colour over TN.
IPS (In Plane Switching) seems to have kinda fallen out of favor, but you can still find plenty. The S-IPS variants (all you find anymore) have the best viewing angle of all technologies. Their colour is very angle invariant. Their colour is also very natural, though they don't have all that good a black point.
Basically, you just need to get a better LCD and you'll probably be happy. Though no LCD can get as deep a black as a CRT, they do have advantages CRTs don't such as being able to get much brighter with no bleed, no convergence issues, never needing calibration, razor sharp text, etc.
I agree that cheapie LCDs don't cut it but I dumped my CRT for a high quality LCD some time ago and I'm rather happy.