I Haven't Got Time for the Pain

Word. My Airport Extreme has been hanging out with your Powerbook for the past couple days. Its about time they make the journey to the US of A, I need the freedom of wireless (tm) !

How long did the last Zeldman design last? One month? Sad, it was very nice.

Todd,

is your 17" display LCD? Have you done any print work with it or only screen design? I am planning to get one soon, but everybody keeps telling me they are no good for doing print stuff (you know, tweaking colors in Photoshop etc.).

RE: "is your 17? display LCD? Have you done any print work with it or only screen design?"

There are two classic arguments against LCDs - one, from color pros who say that CRTs offer better calibration and color depth, and two, gamers who can't get used to the refresh rate of moving graphics (which tend to blur a little).

As for the first, I mainly work in an sRGB 72dpi world, so I have little experience with what the hardcore Photoshop color folks do. I've heard that fine details in shadows (very, very dark but not totally K=100) dissapear in LCDs, but I can't say for certain.

I personally think there's a bit of urban legend here, for LCDs have come so far. I would definitely recommend giving one a test drive. Oh, and all LCDs are definitely not created equal. Look at one in an Apple store, then go to CompUSA and look at theirs - some are quite muddy, blurry.

I use the original 22" cinema display side by side with a 17" studio display (clear plastics, trinitron tube, i think) and the color and brightness are very comparable. I've never felt let down by the LCD, but of course, I don't think you can trust the color on any monitor _to_ much for print or web work. Todd's note about all LCDs not being equal is very true. There are some really crappy ones out there.

Yeah, I'd say its more of an urban legend, like Todd said. As long as you are buying a good quality LCD, for instance, the formac displays (nice!), I wouldn't be worried about it at all. I'm trying to decide b/t the 20.1" or the 23" display right now...

Thanks a lot for the opinions! I will go and test-drive the thing, but I do feel more confident in LCDs after the things you said. Thanks! :)

Re: Opera quits Mac dev.

I used Opera as my administrative browser since it was the only Mac browser that could handle my server's unsigned SSL cert efficiently (until Netscape 7). Its ability to send a web server a cloaked identity was handy as well if a site required a certain browser or platform unavailable to me. Beyond that, I honestly don't know anybody that used it as their default browser.

Another big issue with LCD's, be sure to use DVI and not analog. Many cheaper LCDs use analog and the picture is horrible. Digital input is the way to go... and Apples LCD line is probably some of the best on the market.

Re: Hiding things in the age of the internet
DUDE! Next time let us know when things are [not work safe]
:)

Re: Studio Displays
The Mac displays are so hot, and with their falling prices and the new 802.11g laptops coming out, I might have to make the switch, even though there is no mousewheel, no right click, and no touchpad-drag-the-side-to-scroll.

On a related note, I'm shocked that places like Fry's sell any monitors, they run video output from one machine to about 20 monitors, which results in horrible image degradation..."Here's a $2000 LCD, No, it will look good at home, we promise."

I forgot to mention that I went to CompUSA not too long ago, and saw an Apple Cinema Display in the Wintel section, hooked up to some beige box using a ADC > VGA converter, and the picture was pretty bad. I guess they were trying to show that you CAN use Apple LCDs w/ regular PCs, but it just looked silly.