Good bye Mac Mini

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koffiejunkie

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I'm sad to report that I just sent my Mac Mini off to a new home. As much as I liked it, I just wasn't using it anymore, so I decided to sell it.

On the upside, I got a good price since I sold it with keyboard+mouse and 19" LCD, so I'm looking forward to get a new, bigger screen.

So, any recommendations for a good 24" or larger that can handle 1920x1200 natively? My budget is £350-ish. It has to preferably not TN based, and DVI would be nice, although not essential (I have not heard any good reason for why DVI is better than D-SUB).

So far the top contender is the Acer AL2416WS. It's pretty much identical to the 19" I had, but it's bigger and S-PVA based. I'm open to suggestions though. I would like to have D-SUB+DVI with switch capability (purely for convenience).
 
Don't know if you ever came right with your Purchasing decision but i've got one of those AL2416WS and they absolutely rock!

Have you tried Samsung? They have a killer 24''
 
I very almost bought the AL2416WS but in the end I really wanted to have two inputs (so I can switch between two machines without swapping cables), so I ended up going for the Samsung 245B. So far so good - although I can see this is not aimed at people doing any sort of serious image work. It came out of the box with brightness set to 100% - it's so bright, it's almost unpractical. I ended up taking it down to about 40% to not kill my eyes in the process. Contrast was at 100% too - dropped it to 60%. Colour was also way out, but fortunately it responds pretty well to calibration, so for now I'm happy.
 
I should ad that the Samsung I got is a TN panel. After the Samsung, the next halfway familiar-brand 24" PVA based panel was about £200 more and got pretty shabby reviews, so I decided, if I can calibrate it, I'm OK with it for now. If I ever start making money with this, and the screen obviously falls short of expectations (which it doesn't, so far), I'll invest in something more professional.
 
@alf101, not that I don't like them, I just prefer a laptop. I only really use the screen at home, so that works out well for me. I'm planning to get rid of the MacBook by the end of the year (the screen is really not good enough) and replace it with a MacBook pro for my mobile editing needs.
 
Does the Samsung's Glossy screen not put you off a bit?

Oh wow, the Macbook Pro's screen is amazing. I'm sure you will not be disappointed with it.

Did you just use Mac's Color Profile and Color Sync to calibrate the Samsung or do you did you use one of Pantones color calibrators?
 
Cybermoo said:
Does the Samsung's Glossy screen not put you off a bit?

Oh wow, the Macbook Pro's screen is amazing. I'm sure you will not be disappointed with it.

Did you just use Mac's Color Profile and Color Sync to calibrate the Samsung or do you did you use one of Pantones color calibrators?
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iirc he didnt have the patience to wait for the Spyder and went for the HueyPro instead. Not sure how much success he had with it though.
 
:-( I've also got the HueyPro and it really does not do the job that well! :-/

Maybe I'm just doing it incorrectly but my colors always seem to come out a bit war, regardless on what machine or display I use...

The Spyder is awesome, one of my mates has one and it works like a charm!
 
Cybermoo said:
Does the Samsung's Glossy screen not put you off a bit?
Click to expand...

The Samsung I got is very much matte. I don't like glossy at all - never have. I always had my photos printed in matte, even as a kid :)

Cybermoo said:
Did you just use Mac's Color Profile and Color Sync to calibrate the Samsung or do you did you use one of Pantones color calibrators?
Click to expand...

Pantone Huey Pro.

bwana said:
iirc he didnt have the patience to wait for the Spyder and went for the HueyPro instead. Not sure how much success he had with it though.
Click to expand...

It wasn't so much about patience as it was about availability. Amazon didn't have stock of the Spyder. And up until that time I haven't read anything that suggested one is better than the other.

For what it's worth, from what I've read since, there's only one way to do a proper job of the MacBook's display, and that's with the ColorEyes/DTP-94 combo. Much more expensive though - almost the difference between a MacBook and MacBook Pro :)

Cybermoo said:
:-( I've also got the HueyPro and it really does not do the job that well! :-/

Maybe I'm just doing it incorrectly but my colors always seem to come out a bit war, regardless on what machine or display I use...
Click to expand...

It really didn't give me any problems on the Samsung or on my old Acer LCD, but it doesn't like the MacBook at all.
 
koffiejunkie said:
For what it's worth, from what I've read since, there's only one way to do a proper job of the MacBook's display, and that's with the ColorEyes/DTP-94 combo. Much more expensive though - almost the difference between a MacBook and MacBook Pro :)
Click to expand...
I've got my mother coming down in Sept with her MB so I'll see if I have any problems dialling it in then.
 
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