Know Your Hardware - The Monitor

Ok, for many of you, this might seem obvious, but for others it surprisingly may not be.

That display that you're looking at, the one with the pretty pictures, is your computer's "Monitor". I mostly want to point this out because when my kids started using a computer they kept wanting to refer tot he monitor as "The Computer". If asked to shut the computer off, they would turn off the monitor.

That box that's likely on the floor under your desk, table, whatever, that's your Computer.

Typically Monitors come in two flavors.



The older models that you'll be harder pressed to find are the CRTs. CRT stands for "Cathode Ray Tube". they take up large amounts of space, eat up electricity and produce a lot of heat. Generally speaking, if you're getting a new computer or looking to upgrade, you don't want one of these. The advantage is that like many older technologies, they tend to be cheaper than the alternative.

The other option is a flat panel.



These slick guys are the wave of the future (and current) times. They come in several varieties and sizes and many newer ones come in a 16x9 "widescreen" ratio. As the world moves to widescreen high definition so do standard display sizes. The drawbacks to these are their cost and the fact that they tend to be prone to "dead pixes". Dead Pixes are when a single pixes or dot on a screen stops working. The result is a permanent, generally very small spot that will only irritate you occasionally when you think you've mistakenly added a period to the line of a document.

There are of course other alternative monitoring systems. Many modern televisions double as computer monitors. They still fall into these two basic categories.