To adjust display settings

  1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.

  2. In Control Panel, double-click the Display icon, and click the Settings tab.

The drop-down menu under Color Palette lets you choose the number of colors displayed, or color depth. The choices depend on your configuration, but typically range from 16 colors to thousands or millions of colors. Generally, images will look better at greater color, but on a slow system, more colors can decrease performance. If you're surfing the Web or looking at graphics, you'll want to display as many colors as possible. If you're using your computer primarily for word processing or spreadsheets, you may find that a lower setting works just fine.

The sliders under Display Area let you choose the resolution of your monitor. Your choices will be limited to standard resolutions such as 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024. Higher settings create more area on your desktop by making icons and text smaller. If you enjoy the extra real estate, but find yourself squinting at dialog boxes and command menus, experiment with a few settings to find the right balance. Try to follow the recomendations of the web page you are viewing!

For either option, if you choose settings that exceed the limits of your monitor or video card, you may notice that Windows automatically adjusts the settings. For example, increasing the Display Area to 1280 x 1024 may cause Windows to reduce the number of colors displayed.

If you know your monitor is capable of displaying high resolutions and many colors, but these options aren't available in your Display control panel, it may be that your video card is limiting the options available. end

Sizing Up a Monitor

When you're evaluating a monitor, it's important to know the jargon. The following terms describe the most important attributes of computer monitors and can help you compare models.

  1. Dot Pitch. Dot pitch refers to the vertical distance between like-colored pixels on a monitor's screen. Lower values mean a sharper image. The range of values is small: 0.28 mm is acceptable; 0.24 mm is excellent.

  2. Resolution. Resolution refers to the number of pixels displayed on your monitor, expressed as width x height, for example, 640 x 480. The higher the resolution, the more information you'll be able to see at one time.

  3. Refresh rate. Refresh rate refers to how quickly the image on the monitor is redrawn. It's expressed in Hertz (Hz), or redraws per second. Higher numbers are better: 75 Hz is a reasonable minimum; less than that and images may blur or flicker noticeably. Your monitor may use slower rates at higher resolutions, so try to find the optimum settings.

  4. Viewable Size. Like a television, a monitor's size is measured diagonally. More important, however, is the actual size of the screen, or viewable area. This number can vary widely, even with monitors that are the same size. For example, the viewable area of typical 17-inch monitors can range from 15.1 to 16 inches. That's quite a difference.

  5. Type of tube. Most monitors on the market today use cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), the same technology employed in your TV set. There are other types of screens, such as the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) used in laptops and top-of-the-line flat or low-profile screens, but the information presented here applies to CRTs, which are still the standard for home users.