Dell Selling 30" Flat Panels 417
bling..bling writes "Apple is not the only company selling 30" flat panel monitors. Dell is now offering a 30" flat panel display that has a native resolution of 2560x1600 and sells for $2,199. Just like the apple 30" display you do need a dual link DVI video card to drive this massive beast. This monitor also sports four USB ports and a media card reader.
I've been waiting for Dell or someone else to release a 30" display and hopefully bring the prices down. I'm tired of the dual monitor thing, I want one display device on my desk, just make it a very large device.
See the details on Dell's web site on the new Dell 3007WFP 30-inch widescreen digital flat panel monitor."
Dead Pixels Worries (Score:3, Informative)
Can't thet cut to the chase, how many dead pixels can i get stuck with? as their policy only seems to state:
And 2560x1600 is alot bigger than640x480
Plus for that price, I think i prefer 2 samsung high quality 19" flat panels with no dead pixels [slashdot.org]
I'd rather have dual 24" monitors (Score:4, Informative)
point of comparison (Score:4, Informative)
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore?family=AppleDisplays [apple.com]
Re:Isn't it the same liquid crystal panel as Apple (Score:3, Informative)
* A higher contrast ratio is of course also possible if you get a different backlight and chooses the measuring point to give you that number, but if the response times are indeed lower, or different, it seems they realyy have a different panel. On the other hand, one could technically squeeze a bit of response time difference from using a different signal chip in the monitor.
Same price as 4 Gateway FPD2185W (Score:4, Informative)
This is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
Re:flash: oracle selling database software (Score:2, Informative)
USB on a display (Score:5, Informative)
Be careful, there is a problem with that!
I have a Dell 2405FPW and it has the same ports and readers. When the monitor is switched off, the power supply to this subsystem is cut as well (and apparently it is not powered from the PC USB bus).
I leave my PC switched on all the time, and switch off the monitor when I am not using it. The PC continues to perform server functions.
The result is that every switch off and on of the display it will go through the USB hardware discovery cycle, find all the cardreaders, and try to read all card types. This results in a massive amount of log messages and a very slow PC for 5-10 seconds.
The manual tells about this, but I think many users would not think about it when reading the feature list.
Fortunately, the monitor has multiple inputs (VGA, DVI, S-Video, Composite, Component) and when switching to one of the TV inputs it goes to standby mode when no signal is present. So as a workaround, I switch it off by setting S-Video input and back on by selecting DVI again. Not as convenient, as it needs multiple button clicks to do so.
Don't buy it for $2199 (Score:5, Informative)
This price is ridiculous for a Dell, you can get the apple 30" for $100 more with student discount. And we all know the kinds of margins Apple has.
Calibrator vs Dell vs Apple (sorta) (Score:5, Informative)
Done. Here are the results for my 2 month old Dell 2005FPW, which has been on for about 2 hours before calibration.
Max brightness: 250 cd/m^2 at 100, but dropped 1 cd/m^2 EVERY SECOND I left it at that setting(and oddly enough, when I brought the setting back to 0, luminance climbed slightly over 5-10 seconds, then dropped back to 178-179). 0 is anywhere from 178.2-180.
Guess what? 250cd/m^2, or 250 lumens, is run of the mill. Dell claims an additional 50 lumens. To put that in perspective, that's as if the display had a brightness setting of around "200"(well, a little less, but you get the idea.)
Dell also claims a 600:1 contrast ratio. Except the calibration device measured a minimum luminance of .4 cd/m^2. 180 divided by .4 = 450:1 contrast ratio.
Apple claims a contrast ratio of 400:1 and a max luminance of 250cd/m2 on the Cinema 20", which is supposedly the same exact screen (but different front "glass" and backlight, I believe). How 'bout that.
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you're spending the same $2,000+ on a projector, I doubt you could exceed 1280x1024. (Though I haven't looked too closely at pricing lately.)
Re:point of comparison (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Two heads are better than one! (Score:4, Informative)
Most video cards don't support dual-link at all. Those that do tend to support only one dual-link connection, even if they have two DVI connectors. So, you can only have one 30" display and one smaller (2048x1536 or less) display.
The only current card that I know of that supports two dual-link connections (i.e., can drive two 30" displays) is the nVidia Quattro FX 4500, which costs over $1500.
Re:point of comparison (Score:3, Informative)
$300 for a luxury purchase like this is only a 13% difference. If your looking at quality and saving a buck, keep looking at Apple's refurbished equipment page http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
Re:Two heads are better than one! (Score:3, Informative)
The radeon x1800 series also have dual dual link dvi, not exactly cheap but a lot cheaper than those workstation cards.
Re:USB on a display (Score:4, Informative)
It uses about 59W when running normally, 3W in standby, 1W when "powered off" using the frontpanel button.
Of course the powerconsumption does not drop merely by blanking the display, as with a CRT monitor. Powermanagement can set it to standby.
These numbers are consistent with observation: it gets moderately warm when normally operating, and is cold when it is in standby.
Re:You guys are all pussies (Score:3, Informative)
duallink powerbook (Score:2, Informative)
but even with some small difference in price ($100-300 is small as fraction of the total), i definitely would prefer the apple. 30in monster with black plastic frame and dell logo? and with apple, i know about their rather helpful policy if problems appear.
You might check out my review... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a nice unit. No embedded controls, except for brightness, so you need to use your graphics card control panel to make adjustments. Some minor uniformity problems with the backlight, but good D6500 color temperature tracking.
Oh, and Civ4 looks great at 2560x1600 ;-)
Re:Input (Score:1, Informative)
I recently went to an Apple store and asked the fellow behind the Genius Bar the same question, and we did some in-store experimentation. So my experience has been:
1) It doesn't require "dual DVI inputs", it requires a single "dual-link DVI input". The difference is basically that the DVI bus can actually have two transmitters running over a single line, which allows it to pump way more pixels. So instead of taking a dual-head DVI video card and hooking up both connectors to this monitor, you take a recent, powerful DVI card and hook up only one connector to this monitor. (I was under this misconception for a while, so I post this in order to clarify for others...) You can find out more detailed information about the DVI analog and digital, single- and dual-link configurations here [datapro.net].
2) As long as you have a genuinely digital DVI feed (rather than, e.g., an analog one generated by a VGA-DVI converter-- again, see the DataPro link above for details)... yes you can hook up a card using a single-link DVI transmitter to such a monitor. The Apple Cinema Display scales up the resolution as necessary, so that your 1600x1024 will in fact fill the entire screen; I can't speak for the Dell, but I imagine the behavior's the same. However, the final effect looks pretty terrible.
The upshot: I used to have two machines hooked up to a single 20" CRT, and both were managed by KVM. When I buy a 30" Cinema HD display from Apple sometime in the next few weeks, I'm going to hook it up to the G5 and operate the PC in a window through Remote Desktop, or VNC when I have it booted from a Linux drive. But since I write Windows drivers for a hobby (that's loadable kernel modules to you Linux folk
*snort* Today's captcha == "optical"
Re:Two heads are better than one! (Score:2, Informative)
It also adds such nice things as an extra button at the top right of the window to send it to the other monitor, and I believe keyboard shortcuts to do the same (and to turn off a monitor).
Granted, it'd be nice if windows came with such functionality built in and in all honesty I'd probably find having my menu bar on the other monitor much more annoying than my taskbar.
Cheaper in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.asp
Re:Two heads are better than one! (Score:1, Informative)
I can't speak to "the majority", but I've never heard of any studies done on a 9" screen.
In "Tog on Interface" (p.202), he mentions some user testing he did do:
- first, on a 12" screen
- then, on a 21" screen to the left of a 13" screen that the actual app is on
In the second test, users had to change the color of 10 folders, one at a time, by selecting it on the right display, and choosing a menuitem from the menubar on the left display. And this was *not* "pull-down menus from a single menubar, vs pull-down menus in the window". This test compared pull-down menus in a single menubar (on the wrong display) to pop-up menus directly under the mouse pointer! (Spoiler: the menubar won.)
His results were similar to those reported by Walker and Smelcer, CHI'89.
As such, I'd like an option to "echo" the menu bar onto each monitor, reducing at least half of the problem.
The problem with solutions of this type is that when presented with two ways to do something, people tend to take longer deciding which one to use, than if they'd simply used the slower of the two methods.
As somebody who's done a decent amount of user testing, yes, this is weird, but it's also quite true: adding a second, faster way to do something often slows people down. (Amateur psych: maybe it's because people think if there are two, there must be a difference, so one is right and one is wrong.)
Re:I'd rather have dual 24" monitors (Score:2, Informative)
Re:USB on a display (Score:1, Informative)
not to worry, this is false. I have a 2045FPW in front of me, and I use its USB ports and the builtin card reader a lot. Depending on the actual card or USB stick used the speeds are different, but always ABOVE 12 Mbps. My MP3 player gives ~ 3MBytes/sec both ways, which is the same it gives on any of my other USB ports (and above 12 Mbps).
The parent may have a USB1.1 device on the same USB header (mouse, keyboard,...), which kills the speed for all devices connected to it. It's easy to do that if you don't know your motherboard layout well, as different external USB ports may go to the same internal controller.
So don't worry, the 2405FPW is gorgeous, and the USB support is fantastic: 4 card readers and 4 open ports.
Dell 3007fpw cannot pivot 90 degrees (Score:1, Informative)
No, according to this chart [dell.com]. It also lacks the picture-in-a-picture feature that I did not realize that the less huge Dell monitors have.
Still, it's a really cool product, and I am still leaning toward requesting one.