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My new widescreen wallpaper. I can’t stop looking at it.

Yesterday was Boxing Day here in Canada.  It’s sort of the equivalent of Black Friday in the United States, except everything seems a lot calmer than the stampedes that appear to happen down south.  Ever since I first used a widescreen monitor, I’ve wanted one at home.  I really like the expanded workspace, especially when working on subjects like computer science where sometimes lines of code can get a bit long.  And of course, the benefit of watching anime and films in widescreen is self-explanatory.  Now, the problem was that I couldn’t really justify spending a few hundred dollars to buy a new (good) LCD monitor, but then I saw a rather good deal on a Samsung monitor in Future Shop’s Boxing Day sale flyer.  A $300 Samsung T220, their 22″ widescreen LCD, being sold for $200.  It seemed good enough of a deal to push me towards buying it.  So I headed out to Future Shop early today and got a spot in line.  There were a minimum of 60 in each store, so I didn’t think that I would have to go too early.

Spiffy.

First of all, I have to say that Samsung sure knows how to design a nice-looking product.  My old LCD monitor was a regular 17″ which did it’s job fine, but the new Samsung one really stands out sitting here in my room.  It looks very sleek – the large screen is bordered by a black frame which in turn is bordered by a small glass frame.  There is a red bar of sorts which underlines the monitor at the bottom – it sounds strange but looks very nice.  Also, the power button is touch sensitive rather than being a physical button – a nice touch.  If this were a little bigger it would probably fit right into your living room as an LCD television.

Now, let’s get into the actual display.  To put it simply, this product is phenomenal, a great value for the $200 I paid for it, but even for it’s original $300 price tag it’s worth it.  The picture is just great.  Colors are vibrant and clear, the contrast ratio is amazing, and everything just looks much richer compared to my previous monitor.  I’ve installed a few colorful wallpapers just to see how it would look and it’s almost mesmerizing, I spent minutes just staring at the widescreen wallpapers beacuse of how well the monitor brought out the colors.  Everything simply looks very sharp.

When I bought my last monitor, it was along with my computer and I picked a cheap brand (Metro) because I didn’t want to spend too much money altogether.  And that served me fine for the past few years, but I really recommend people who have the funds to go all-out and not choose the cheapest display you can find.  There is a substantial difference between the low-end LCD’s and the high-end ones.  This Samsung looks fantastic compared to my old Metro and combined with the widescreen format, I have to say that I am really satisfied with my purchase.

I messed around with a few wallpapers before I decided on the one that I really liked.  Originally I had it set up with this Okami wallpaper:

Which looks quite beautiful in its own right, but the one I have now just kind of shines with this monitor.  The funny thing is, I haven’t watched the anime that it’s from nor do I recognize the character seated in the middle.  Maybe one day I’ll convince myself to watch it – that would be an interesting reason for discovering an anime.  “I like the wallpapers”.