Here's a good article about this: Internet Freedom sucking monkey balls

For me, this is the start along a very dangerous path for internet freedom and a big brother style monitoring society. What do you guys all think?

Most of you have probably already read our post on Network .PST files, or Windows Explorer and SMB Traffic.  We have seen an increase in file server load issue that go beyond some of the obvious issues such as Network .PST files, misbehaving filter drivers, or pool memory depletion. As server environments continue to scale upwards with larger file server needs and thousands of clients connecting to file servers for user profiles and redirected documents, these issues become more common.

When troubleshooting these issues, there is often a need to capture a Network trace of the problem while it is occurring.  However, not every administrator is comfortable with capturing network traces.  On top of that, reading network traces is a bit of an art – and one that does take some time to master.  Today we are going to discuss a tool that can help you capture a network trace with very little effort.  In my next post, I’ll show you how to take that network trace and perform a quick analysis on it that doesn’t require you to be a network expert and apply some simple fixes that have resolved many of the issues that we have seen.  So, let’s get started …

The tool we are going to use is Network Monitor 3.1 OneClick.  This is a free tool available from the Microsoft Download Center.  There are two OneClick packages available – Autorun and ExtractOnly.  The Autorun package installs Network Monitor 3.1 on your machine if you did not previously have it installed and begin a network capture.  The capture is designed to stop automatically when it reaches 30MB in size, or after 120 minutes – whichever comes first.  After the capture completes, if you did not have Network Monitor 3.1 already installed on your machine, then Network Monitor 3.1 is automatically uninstalled.  The ExtractOnly packages is used if you want to save the OneClick utility on a USB key or other portable media and run the tool later on a different machine.  Let’s take a look at how the Autorun package runs on a Windows Server 2008 machine.

When you run the tool, the first thing you are prompted for is a path to save your network capture.  As you can see, the default location to save the capture is in your profile in the “Network Captures” folder.  For this demonstration, I am going to save the data in a different location – C:\TOOLS\NETCAPS.

If you are running this tool on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 with UAC enabled, you will see the following if you did not run the program with elevated privileges.  Alternatively, if your user account is in the NetMon Users group on the local machine, you should not encounter this error:

So, let’s try this again – and this time, we’ll launch the program with elevated privileges:

This time, Network Monitor 3.1 installed successfully, and the capture is launched.  If I look in the folder where I saved the capture, I can see that the capture reached the maximum size of 30MB and has stopped growing:

Once I am ready to end the capture (assuming that 120 minutes has not elapsed and auto-terminated the capture), I hit the ‘x’ key to terminate the capture and the capturing ends, and Network Monitor is removed:

And that’s how easy it is to get a Network Capture on a server!  The OneClick application automatically captures the traffic on all network interfaces so you don’t even need to worry about specifying which network card to monitor – which is very useful on multi-homed machines, such as cluster servers.

With that, it is time to bring this post to an end.  In my next post, we’ll take a look at an actual capture from a file server having issues and go over a quick fix you might be able to use in your environment,

By Austin Mack

 I do know lots of electronic repairers especially newbie’s do not have the courage to perform the voltage test especially Computer Monitors and Television because they were afraid of the high voltage and get electrocuted. Well, if you want to work in this line and choose not to learn about voltage testing (because of afraid), then you are truly missing something that can help you to repair any equipment fast. After all, voltage testing is not that as dangerous as you thought to be. With some guidance from repair friends or even you test it on your own (practical) and protection from isolation transformer, I don’t see any other reasons you don’t want to do the voltage testing. Besides this of course you must know the safety guidelines first in this electronic servicing field.

The real challenging question now is even though you know how to perform the voltage testing; this does not guarantee that you will definetely being able to solve the electronic problems! As to why you can’t solve the problems depends on many factors such as:

- How well you are in understanding the functions of electronic circuit (assuming I’m talking on the Monitor circuit). Some Monitors circuits can be very complicated to understand it.

 - How good you are in tracing the electronic circuit (assuming you are tracing from the source to the faulty components) because many electronic repairers will lost track and can’t go further to detect the fault.

 - How knowledgeable you are in understanding each function of the electronic component. For example, if no signal flowing to the base of a transistor, of course there would be no current flowing between the collector and the emitter. Another example, what do you expect the output voltage will be if 100 volts is passing through between a 10 ohm resistor and a 10 k ohms resistor? 

- Sometimes in order to solve a problem we accidentally create even more problems due to that we do not have the capability to hold tight the meter’s probes causing it to touch on other pins while measuring a components (says is an IC or a transistor). This would cause the whole equipment to shutdown or even burnt the components. How many of you have done that before?

- We must also know what the range of the meter setting is in order to test the electronic circuit accurately. For example, would you test the secondary output voltages when your meter is set to AC range? Or would you expect a reading when your meter’s red probe touches on a cold ground?

From above, these are the things that you should know if you want to be successfully able to perform a voltage test on any equipment. It is not that easy to absorb everything that I’ve just mentioned above but if you have the passion to do it (I mean learn everything from reading electronics books, visiting forum, doing your own practical test and etc) then you are giving yourself a chance to learn something that will truly benefit to you.

In this week’s article I’m going to show you how by performing a voltage test has helped me to solve an unusual problem in a Computer Monitor.

I still could recall when I first encountered such problems long time ago and because of lack of information, I could not solve it. I did call up my repair friends to asked about the solution but no one able to give me an answer. Even if you surf the internet for “Samsung 153V LCD Monitor dim display repair”, you would not find it. Due to this I have to do my own research to find the answer and I’ve never give up. Winston Churchill once said “Never, never, never give up”. I’m releasing the solution only to my loyal members or subscribers only-thanks for your support.

Let’s start now! Once the cover and the internal aluminum casing were opened I saw two bulged filter capacitors at the secondary side of switch mode power supply. The value was 470 and 1000 microfarad 25 volts. I saw four more electrolytic capacitors located at the inverter board have changed color and the value was 47 micro farad 25 volts. Browsing through the whole board with my ESR meter I found another capacitor faulty (220 uf 25 volts) which was near the fuse (3amp). Since this capacitor was located at the same line with the fuse, I presumed that the fuse may give way as well. True enough, checking the fuse with an ohmmeter revealed that it has open circuit.

Now, the real problem faced by many electronic repairers who deals with this model was, after replacing all of the components above the LCD Monitor still would not work-it’s still dim! First you have to ask yourself why the fuse blown? Could it be caused by the defective capacitors or something shorted beyond the fuse line? The nearest circuit to the fuse was the start circuit that consisted of a pair of NPN and PNP digital transistor (4k7 +4k7 resistor built into the transistor). Some other LCD monitor designed used the combination of C945 and A733 in start circuit. By the way the part number for Samsung 153V start circuit transistors were the A6J (PNP digital transistor) and the A8J (NPN digital transistor) as shown in the picture.

Sometimes only these transistors have problems (shorted) that caused the fuse to blow but in the above case both digital transistors are tested okay. Since both transistors were working, now the concentration have to be in the four ic’s that drive the high voltage transformers because the 12 volts voltage was supplying to each of these ic’s. These 4 ic’s have many part numbers and the most common one that the manufacturer used was 4532m. Some board used the AD4E10 and BBD3N13 part number. At the moment it is quite hard to get the datasheet or technical specification for this number even from the web search.

Do you know what is inside these IC’s? It is actually a pair of P-channel and a N-channel mosfet built into it. And do you know that it can be test with a meter? Yes, if you use the Peak atlas component analyzer, it would prompt to you the result. From the result what you get are N channel FET located at pin 1 (source), pin 2 (gate), pin 7 & 8 (drain and both pins joint together internally). As for P channel FET, pin 3 (source), pin 4 (gate) and pin 5 & 6 (drain and both pins joint internally). From the above test I found two of these ic’s have shorted. Replacing these two shorted IC with the capacitors and fuse put the LCD Monitor back to life!

One more thing I would like to share on this model was that the inverter PWM IC BIT1305 was quite robust and rarely gave problem.

Jestine Yong is a electronic repairer and a writer, for more electronic and LCD MONITOR repair information, please visit his website at http://www.electronicrepairguide.com/lcd-monitor-repair.html

sumber : http://ezinearticles.com/?Repairing-Samsung-153V-LCD-Monitor-With-Dim-Display-Problem&id=548677

Making adjustments to settings, and turning various things on or off, is known as "tweaking", and sometimes "optimizing". And being a Geek, I love to tweak my machines until they're running like a Indy 500 car. Today's quick tip will take you all of 45 seconds to do, and it will give you noticeable results.

Tip of the Day: Turn on font smoothing, and turn off special effects.
The settings we're going to tweak are all found on the Appearance tab of your Display Properties: right-click on a blank area of your Desktop and select "Properties"
 
On the "Appearance" tab, click on the "Effects" button.

Here we're going to turn one item on, and three off, by placing or removing checkmarks.
1) Turn on the ClearType font smoothing feature by placing a check in its checkbox, and using the drop-down arrow to set it to ClearType. This will make reading easier, and reduce headache-causing eye strain.
2) Turn off the "bells-and-whistles" special effects that, while 'modern' and 'cool', really only slow things down quite unnecessarily. (aka "waste system resources")
* uncheck "transition effects"
* uncheck "shadows"
* uncheck "show windows contents while dragging"
3) Click OK, and OK again.

That's it. You're done. Easy, right? Right. Should you change your mind someday, undoing these changes is just as easy.. just place a check again. (But I very much doubt you will!)

Today's free link: Loyal fans of this series know that I am obsessed with advising folks to make backup copies of their computer files in case of a failure; and that I wrote that one option was to use a "online" storage solution (as one of your two locations)(read Online Storage for Data Backup).
There's a new service out called BackBlaze that is worth checking out. Click here to read a review of the "World's easiest online backup" (and download link).

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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A pesar de que los negocios del periodista José Gutiérrez Vivó se encuentran en una encrucijada, y a que el también empresario enfrenta cuantiosas demandas por falta de pago, en los campos de golf se fortalece la versión de que el creador de Monitor posee una de las tres colecciones de autos antiguos más importantes del mundo. Dicha versión dice que con sólo vender un vehículo podría saldar varias de sus deudas y reactivar sus negocios. ¿En serio?

Yo poseo un laptop y no me gusta tener que esperar a que el monitor se apague solo, así que me puse a buscar y encontré una forma de hacerlo y es la siguiente:

Sistema > Preferencias > Combinaciones de teclas

ahí verás como aparecen muchas combinaciones que puedes usar, pero no puedes agregar, para hacerlo haz lo siguiente:

Alt + F2 y escribimos gconf-editor

Ahora en la ventana que aparece nos dirigimos a:

apps > metacity > keybinding_commands

y escoges por ejemplo; command_1 y en valor escribe el comando que apaga el monitor, el cual es el siguiente:

xset dpms force off

Ahora te vas a:

apps > metacity > global_keybindings

Busca una clave con el mismo nombre que la clave que editamos en keybinding_commands pero con run_ al principio. ej: run_command:1

Lo siguiente sería escribir la combinación de teclas que quieras (que no esté en uso) y listo, yo usé control + alt + a

Para encender el monitor basta con presionar una tecla o mover el mouse.

Eso sería todo, puedes hacer lo mismo para correr aplicaciones con un comando.

Sitting at her desk, typing as she stared fixedly at the monitor, she daydreamed. On the walls of her cubicle were photos she had cut from magazines – pictures of bright, sunny places, white sand, blue water. Her own personal escape clauses that let her be anywhere other than here. Someday, she thought. Someday.

Her phone buzzed, making that horrible noise that replaced the old fashioned bell ring of her youth. She winced as it shook her out of both her fantasy and work trance. Picked up the phone, gingerly, as though it might cause her some bodily harm. The voice on the other end said, “Is this Debbi?”

“Yes.”

“This is Rob Marte of WLST radio. Did you enter our Relax & Enjoy sweepstakes?”

“Yes.”

“And what is the phrase that plays?”

“Umm. WLST, listeners sit tight?”

“That’s right Debbi. And guess what?”

“What?” she asked in a whisper.

“YOU’RE OUR BIG WINNER!!! You and a guest will fly on TransAirWorld to beautiful Swangaloo where you will be staying at the Deluxarama. There, on your all expense paid trip, you’ll be staying in a private villa, with a butler and chef at your beck and call. You’ve got a private beach, open bar, and $2,500 cash to spend as you choose during ten unbelievable days. It doesn’t get much better than this.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No joke Deb. You are the lucky winner.”

“Me?”

“You. And whoever you choose to take with you.”

“I have to take someone?”

“Yup. You and a guest. Hang on the line and I’ll put our producer on with you to give you all the details, terms and legal stuff.”

Debbie breathed deeply, trying not to pass out. A male voice got on the line, “Debbie, congratulations! This is Marc. There are all kinds of details I need to share with you. Where are you now?”

“I’m at work. I can’t breath.”

The voice laughed, “You can breath. C’mon Deb, in and out, in and out.”

Debbie worked at breathing for a minute, “I won? I really won? I never win anything.”

“You really won this time Debbie. It’s quite a prize, too. I’m jealous.”

“I’m really going to Swangaloo? I’ve been dreaming about it since I was a kid.”

“Swangaloo and you. There’s a ton of paperwork and details we need to take care of first.”

“Should I come over to the station?”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at work, at 32^nd and 18^th.”

“There’s a coffee house not far from there, how about we meet at lunchtime and go over all the stuff?”

“Really? That would be super. I take lunch at 1:00.”

“I’ll meet you there. I’ll be wearing a black WLST t-shirt.”

Debbi hung up the phone, stunned at her sudden good fortune. Ten days in Swangaloo! All expenses paid. She’d have to get the time off from work and arrange for a dog sitter and stop the mail and all kinds of stuff. Then it hit her. Oh. My. God. I won. I won I won I won. Debbi glanced at the clock and saw that she had a little over two hours before meeting with Marc. She got up from her desk and went to the ladies room. Looking in the mirror, she saw her eyes sparkling in a way they never had before. When she returned to her desk, she was more composed, mentally compiling prospective candidates to join her on the trip. If only there was a man in her life. It would be so romantic. Instead, this would be a girl’s trip, which was fun too. Sister or best friend, she wondered. So much to think about!

By the time Debbi hit the coffee house, she was back to earth, but still sparkling. Marc was waiting for her with a ream of papers and lots of legalese. She signed documents, read papers, and they talked and laughed about good fortune finally coming her way. The hour flew by, and Debbi gathered her things to get moving back to work. Marc spoke, “Debbi, don’t forget, we need your travel dates within a week and the name of your travel companion then.” She nodded and smiled a shy smile at Marc as she left.

Back at the office, she was flying high, cloud nine, the works. Nothing could put a damper in her mood, as much as her co-worker, Selma, the harbinger of doom tried. “It’s not real Deb, it’s a scam. Did you even read the papers they made you sign?” Debbie just ignored her, blocking out the sound of her ferret like voice, as she checked the calendar for suitable weeks. Ten days! In Swangaloo!

Unlocking her front door, Debbi smiled yet again. In fact, she couldn’t remember when she last smiled as much as she had today. On her way home, she had stopped at the store for some lottery tickets. Why not, she figured. Her message machine was beeping, pushing play, there were five messages – one from her sister, three from girlfriends, and one from Marc. “I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I really enjoyed meeting you and I was wondering if maybe you want to have dinner with me someday. Give me a call.” Thinking about his deep blue eyes, she smiled once more, only this time she blushed.

Another day. Another dollar. And a dream fulfilled.

By:  Lauren J. Walter   July 22, 2008

Software such as Spy agent and Real-time spy has all the capabilities to find out exactly what your kids are doing. You can see all their emails, where they surfed, what they downloaded and what they are saying to their friends on sites like Facebook.

There will be nothing they can do on your PC to hide their tracks. Best of all is that you can install the software in total secrecy and they won’t be able to detect it or even know that it’s there.

Let’s say that you are constantly experiencing problems with your PC and you don’t know what it is. With spy software, you can pinpoint the exact problem to prevent future mishaps.

In the wrong hands, this type of software can be quite dangerous, so please don’t use it for any illegal activities. It’s definitely legal to install it on a PC you own, but you are not allowed to install it on someone else’s PC without their consent.

Software to Spy On Your Kids

www.etidbitz.com/spysoftware.html

SpyAgent:

* Use this software when you are physically present to install it and able to review the logs at a later stage.

* Cannot be detected by most anti spy ware software and logs e-mail, instant message conversations, internet browsing history and a whole lot more.

* Download a free trial here and see for yourself what this software does. This software is extremely popular and is preferred by a lot of people.

Real-Time Spy:

* Use this software when you are not physically present and want to view everything your kids do in real time. You can literally install this software from anywhere in the world and view your logs at any time.

* Does exactly what SpyAgent does and more, with the real benefit being able to monitor everything in real time.

* Use the free online demo and see the awesome power of this software!

Software to spy on your kids

Other Sites About Spy software:

Main site: Software to spy on your kids

Lenses about software to spy on your kids

Ways to spy on kids on internet

Spy software

Monitor internet activity

Pode ser a tecnologia. O dólar barato. Ou ambos. O fato é que me surpreendi ao saber que este novo monitor widescreen de 22 polegadas da LG chega ao mercado custando 1.069 reais (preço sugerido).

O espanto não é gratuito. Há 3 anos, paguei 1.700 reais por um monitor de 17 polegadas. Era uma época em que tempo de atualização de tela de 8 milissegundos era "top".

Pois bem, o W2284F da LG promete atualizar a tela em 2 milissegundos. Sem falar na razão de contraste, de 30.000:1.

Para quem não sabe, a razão de contraste indica a diferença entre a cor mais clara e a mais escura produzida pela tela. Quanto maior esse intervalo, maior será a chance de que a cor preta será mostrada como preta e a branca como branca, e não como algum tom de cinza.

O recorde parece ser ainda da Sharp, que em 2005 anunciou seu monitor ASV Premium, com contraste de 1.000.000:1 - um espectro de cores para ninguém botar defeito.

Para completar, o W2284F tem conexões VGA e DVI - padrão para os dias de hoje - e resolução de 1.680 x 1.050 pontos, que equivale, na prática, à resolução "full HD" da TV digital, que é de 1.080 linhas.

PDF proofs are meant for checking font types, images placement etc, while it gives you some indication of color, it is not at all accurate in telling how colors will turn out. Each monitor is calibrated differently and therefore the same pdf will look different on yours and the person sitting next to you.

Whether you are printing just a few or thousands CDs / DVDs, you can always request a hard copy printing proof. This is how you can accurately tell the artwork will print on the production machines, and it is the only way to correctly proof color. Artwork can be adjusted if the proof reflects color differences.

When it comes to monitors there are many things to consider. I will tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know, at the end of this you will be a monitor expert and know more than almost any clerk at any store you walk in to. It may be a bit long with stick with it, you will be glad you did.

First we will start with the difference between a CRT and a LCD. By now the LCD has won the game for new monitors, but many still debate whether to keep the OLD CRT or to upgrade to the LCD. Well there are many reasons that a LCD is better, the only reason to use a CRT is if you don’t have the money to get a LCD.

But even with that it will still cost you. The average 19” LCD uses only about 50W of power, while the average 19” CRT is over 250W. In Arizona we have cheap power, costing only on average 9 cents per KWH. After taxes and such it is about 12 cents. If you count the heat created by the CRT and the power to cool this heat during the summer you would have to count about 24 cents per KWH during the summer and 12 cents during the winter. This is an average of 18 cents per KWH. A 200 usage will result in 3.6 cents per hour. I use my monitor about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is $2.50 per week. With an average 19” monitor costing less than $170 it would only take 68 weeks for a new 19” LCD to pay for itself. If this is not reason enough to get one then let me give you a few more.

The LCD monitor will take up much less space on your desk.
The LCD monitor will allow you to work longer with less eye strain. Think of a CRT monitor as a particle accelerator aimed at your head.
The LCD monitor has a much crisper picture.
The LCD monitor is much less heavy in case you need to move it.

So now that you see clearly that a LCD is the best choice PLEASE don’t do what most of my customers want to do, they simply select a size and shop for the absolute cheapest LCD of that size. That is a very bad idea. Like anything else you get what you pay for, and in monitors if you pay a bit more you really get a lot extra. Well there are a lot of things to look for.

LCD monitors work by having a white light in the background, then each pixel blocks anywhere from no light to all of the light, it does it in Red, Green and in Blue. So to make purple it will only block the green, red and blue shine through and purple is created. Most LCD monitors can block each color in any of 256 different levels. This gives each pixel 16.8 million different color combos.

Monitors also have different speeds at which they can change these colors. Most are 5ms, meaning 5/100th of a second, or 20 times per second. Most humans can only see about 20-25 updates per second, the older you are the lower this number is. For anything except video or games 5ms is fine, but if you want to have faster refresh rates 2ms is a much better for only a little more money. The eyes of most people can not tell the difference between 2ms and 5ms so don’t get all caught up in this. Beware that some cheap monitors are 8 or even 10ms, this costs them less to make and many unaware customers looking only at price buy these, even people with bad eyes can notice video slowness in these monitors.

As I said there is a white light at the back, if you want great bright graphics you need this light to be brighter. They measure this brightness in cd/m2 which means Candle power per square meter. A rating of 250 cd/m2 would be like having 250 candles in a square meter. For me the higher this rating is the better. If you are in a bright room such as an office you really need to focus on this feature. Again many cheap monitors are in the 200-250 range, simple because it is cheaper and people often only look at price. 300 is actually much nicer and the most popular brightness level, but for a bit more money you can find 400 and 500 cd/m2 models.

Now because your pixels are blocking the light you have to be concerned of how good of a job they are doing. This is called Contrast Ration. 500:1 means that the whitest white is 500 times brighter than the darkest dark. We already know exactly how bright the white is by the brightness measurement so what we really are talking about is how dark the monitor can get. Dark is great for video games, and movies. If you are in a typical office environment just doing normal typical office stuff then forget this number, it means very little to you. But if you want great crisp colors and dark darks in you movie then look for a large ratio. 700:1 and 800: are good and very common, only the cheapest or oldest monitors will have numbers lower than this. 1000:1 is the most common, but 3000:1 is getting very popular among high end quality monitors.

Now you have to decide if you want speakers or not, I have a great set of speakers so I don’t care either way, but for most offices your computer probably does not have speakers. About half of these monitors have at least basic speakers. Because I don’t need them I will look for one without them or one that has them hidden. If you need them you may want to look at the different sound out put but I have found that almost all of them are a very poor 1 to 2 Watts of power.

Now you will see monitors that are grey, or black or silver, even white. For me a black border is by far the best. It is much less distracting to the eyes.

You also need to decide if you want the Widescreen 16:9 ratio or the normal 4:3 ratio. Because the size of the screen is measured diagonally a monitor of the same diagonal size that is 4:3 will be about 10% larger than a widescreen. But if you are watching a movie and 40% of your screen is the black bars on the top and bottom then your movie will be larger on a 16:9. For me I like to have wide screen monitors, because I can then put things side by side. It is better for writing things surfing the web. Humans see much wider than they see high, so it makes sense.

Now you also have the choice of inputs with most nicer LCD monitors. The cheapest ones only have VGA (15-Din), but the nicer ones also offer DVI and recently HDMI. Some even have component input. If your monitor has more than 1 then you usually have a button that lets you select which input you would like to use at any given time, this is useful for the people with more computers than monitors, like techs often are. DVI is digital and if your computer has a DVI out I would look for a DVI monitor for sure, it is much nicer, but if you computer only has VGA then only get DVI if it is free or you are fairly sure you are upgrading soon.

I saved the two most important considerations for last, Size and Resolution. Most people think too much about money and they instantly think that smaller is better, but in todays market a 15” and a 17” screen are the same price, and in many cases the 15” is more money. Also a 19” is often only $20 more than a 17” and a 22” is often only $40 more than the 19”. For most people I suggest a 19” for offices and a 22” for home use. If you use the computer a lot at the office then get the 22”. See you are already paying for the monitor, and if you want to upgrade at a time in the future you will not be able to get the full value for your smaller one, thus it will cost much more to upgrade later than it will to do so today, so buy the size you really want right now.

Next is resolution, this comes back to the eyes question. Most sizes have a resolution that makes up about 90% of the market for that size. Almost all 19” widescreen monitors are 1440x900 while most 22” monitors are 1680x1050. Every now and then you can find monitors for about 20-30% more money that jump to the next level, such as a 1680x1050 for a 19” Monitor. Most monitors are designed for what looks good at that size. I would only suggest someone to go to the higher resolution if they have very good way above average eyesight.

You should always try to run a LCD at the highest resolution that it can support, if you don’t then your images will look very bad. It works like this. If the monitor can display 1280 pixels wide but you select 1024 then that means that 5 pixels in the monitor are trying to display every 4. So they will not line up, it works like this. Imagine pixel 1,2,3,4,5 and data pixels a,b,c,d. Pixel 1 will show the color of a and 25% the color of b. Pixel 2 will show 75% the color of b and 50% the color c. Pixel 3 will be the average of half the color of b and half of c. This is easy math for your computer and monitor but it will make everything look blended and blurry. For all the people who can not see well lowering your resolution will make your screen look even worse than running at the correct resolution and resizing as much as you can to make things larger.

One of the first things that I tell people is to think about their eyes. How large do they like text. Computers today STILL mostly render things based upon resolution. In a dream world you should always run your monitor at the highest resolution, so things would be the most smooth but be able to resize things based upon your taste BUT this is NOT the case. Unfortunately MANY things in computers are still a set number of pixels in size. At least in vista they allow you to change most of your OS to make it larger, you really only have this problem on the web. So if a person with bad vision buys a really large 24” monitor and has a resolution of 1920x1200 and they use that resolution things will still be small, so they sent the resolution to something like 1280x768, now things are only about half as crisp and clear as they should be, there is no winning this game. They could always use the zoom feature of their OS but that is not very user friendly. I hope they fix this problem but I don’t see this ever being fixed.

Last, monitors die sometimes, also they often have dead pixels, a pixels that will not change to the correct color all of the time. Most of these are covered under warranty, but many companies will not return a monitor unless it has at least 6 or 8 dead pixels. You want to be clear of this before you buy. And if you are buying a really cheap monitor then test it before you leave the store. Almost every year a new company starts up and dumps a ton of cheap monitors on the market, they sell millions of units promising a 3 or even 5 year warranty, then after a year they go out of business, change the name on all the boxes and do it all over again. Now there are some really good quality monitors from companies you may never have heard of, just because you have not heard of them does not mean that they are not good, but if an expert has not heard of them beware. We currently sell Hanns-G for many of our mid range monitors and we sell Samsung or Viewsonic for our high end monitors. We have had great experiences with all three of these. We have had bad luck with KDS, Acer and a few other brands that are now gone.

So bottom line, think about what your needs are. Don’t shop for the cheapest. If you have more questions then contact me, I will be happy to help you select your monitor, and I will probably be able to find a much better one at a better price than you ever thought.

This ended up being much longer than I thought, thanks for reading all of it, please forward this to anyone you know who is thinking of getting a new monitor, they will be happy you did. Leave a comment if you liked this blog.

This past week also saw the controversial news of court interpreter Dr. Camayd-Freixas penning an essay about what he witnessed during the court proceedings following the recent Agriprocessors raid in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008.  This ICE raid, the largest in its history, involved over 900 agents and put nearly 400 extralegal workers on trial for their work in the largest kosher meat-packing plant in the nation.  While Agriprocessors was merely fined and sternly reprimanded, the lives of these Guatemalan immigrants and the town which had become their home have been gutted by the legal proceedings that imprisoned more than 260 of them for 5 months.  Detained for weeks in a converted cattle-ground holding house called the National Cattle Congress, paraded into court in handcuffs, shackles, and chains, these immigrants with Mayan last names listened tearfully to the Spanish interpretation of what had already been decided in the court well in advance of the raid.  Rather than simply deporting these workers who were lured here under false promises of well-paid work and future citizenship, these hard-working immigrants now must sit in county jails with charges of aggravated identity theft and Social Security fraud as their families scramble to make ends meet without these principal breadwinners.  ("The Shame of Postville, Iowa")

Postville, IA, once a town of 2,273, has lost more than 1/3 of its community in the month since the terrifying raid.  ICE timed the raid before the end of the school year, when some migrant workers would have returned to their homes, and as a result the end of the school year saw Latino students legal and extralegal terrified to go to school.  3 of 15 high-school students showed up for school the week after the raid, while 120 out of 260 students in the elementary and middle school were missing.  The schools' principal actually rode around town on a school bus, coaxing and cajoling these students to come to school, assuring them that ICE cannot raid a public school because of Peter Schey's landmark case in the 1980s; 50 of them would not be convinced. American children were having nightmares that their parents would be similarly deported or jailed.  (Camayd-Freixas)

Dr. Camayd-Freixas broke ranks with the "unbiased" legal interpreters by publishing his reflections and observations of this humanitarian disaster.  He was moved to write as he saw immigrants begging in their native language to be deported quickly.  He was moved as he listened to the weeping of fathers who had walked a month and ten days before finally crossing the Rio Grande.  He was moved to hear of families who had journeyed here only to work for a year or two in hopes of saving enough money to survive in Latin America, a desire that could have been legitimized if only temporary work permits were legislated instead of Secure Fence Acts.  These men and women waived their 5th amendment rights to trial by jury in hopes of a "fast-tracked" deportation five months later, despite the fact that they had used false papers not for unlawful activity or felonious actions but rather for seeking a living wage. (Camayd-Freixas)  In this New Era of ICE operations, a new government agency which grew 10% last year and is readying itself for many more of these raids in the name of the War on Terror, every small town must cringe in fear whether it has extralegals living within its borders or not;  terror terrifies indiscriminately.

As a border wall is being prepared for the Texas-Mexico border and as future ICE raids are being formulated based on the "success" of the Postville sting, the Beijing Olympics are about to begin.  The United States will boast its largest number of immigrant athletes since these statistics were kept.  These 33 immigrants will represent the United States and surely bring pride to red-blooded Americans as they stand on podiums to hear their new national anthem.  We can all be proud of the four Chinese-Americans representing us in table-tennis, or the Polish-American kayaker, or the Russian-American gymnast Nastia Liukin, or the New Zealand immigrant triathlete.  All of us will hold our breath in August as we watch the men's 1500-meter squad of immigrants; Kenyan-American Bernard Lagat will run alongside the Sudanese "lost boy" Lopez Lomong and Mexican laborer's son Leo Manzano who only recently got his citizenship in 2004.  We can all be proud of these new Americans, but we must also take a hard look at our nation's policies which simultaneously champion a few token immigrants while terrorizing others and making the immigration process both dehumanizing and virtually impossible for so many (Wilson, Duff and Andrew Lehren)  As I watch the Summer Olympics, it will be tough for me to think of China's human rights violations which have caused protests throughout much of the free world; I will be too busy crying as I watch American immigrants bask in their one day of glory, saving up these precious memories for four more years and for all the immigrants who will never receive acclaim and recognition for the work they do to make our country what it is.

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