Purchasing a flat panel

I would think if your in the US or anywhere actually, that a major outlet like Bestbuy(US) or Futureshop(canada) would have a payment plan.

Buy two, one for you and send me the other for christmas. 19' please and thanks!

Take Care.
If money was no object, how could you spend it!

I have an IBM 15" Flat Panel with a fixed resolution of 1024x768 and a Nec LD2010X

When I play games or do anything at a lower resolution the monitor still looks good unlike a laptop.

On the laptop you get some pixes are doubled and some are not hence you get ugliness. What these flat panels do is to intepolate and say you are going from 1024x768 to 800x600 it will interpolate the pixels so all pixels are the same size (unlike the laptop which will have some pixels double and some not)... The result is that the resolution has a slight anti-aliased look to it. It looks softer and is very usable. The LD2010X comes up with an on-screen menu whining that this isn't the "optimal" resolution of 1280x1024 (you can turn off the whining) but it also does the interpolation...

I am not sure if all flat panel's do this.

If you look in the Digital Flat Panel Guide(s) it gives a good description of the pixel interpolation. I think they called it pixel interpolation or something like that... You will know it when you seee it in one of hte three guides...

I believe the interpolation on the flat panel depends on the graphics card. Most newer graphics cards(with flat panel support) have a ratiometric interpolation feature, which uses algorithm to expand the pixels not by doubling them, but by using a geometric algorithm, hence, when a user changes from an lcd panels native resolution, the same ratio of pixels remain, providing a better picture, if you lower the resolution on your panel.

Older notebooks that uses older graphics card does not have these feature, thus, if a user changes from the native resolution, in order to acommodate the active area space on a lcd panel, then some pixels are either doubled or not. This hence gets "ugliness". However newer notebooks that uses ATI mobility graphic adapters usually has ratiometric expansion feature.

So, basically, if you wanna get an lcd panel, also get a good graphics card with it. I recommend using a card that supports any form of digital output, and an lcd panel that supports it, since changing from analog to digital is succeptible to signal loss.