Picking a monitor

Pt. 2 of 5 | 4:31 |

How Do I: Choose PC accessories

Tuesday November 23, 2010

Unless you're using a laptop, you're going to need to

find a monitor

to use with your

PC setup

. There are many different

types of monitors

available and we'll walk you through some of them in this episode and show you how to

hook up your monitor

once you've picked one out.

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Show Notes

- Monitors come in either 4:3 or 16:9. 16:9 monitors have more screen space to work with and are better for watching modern movies.

- Older 4:3 models have just as many vertical pixels but don't provide the same potential resolution horizontally.

- Generally, the larger the screen you get the more pixels you have to work with. You don't need a high resolution monitor necessarily but it will help your display.

- You'll need to connect your monitor to your PC using the best connection possible. Options include VGA and HDMI.

- Adapters are available if your monitor and PC connections don't match.

- Two specifications you should pay attention to are refresh rate (how fast the screen refreshes) and response time (how fast pixels switch from white to black).

- Another question is whether you need more than one monitor. In some situations more than one monitor may be more convenient.

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