PC Question: Using HDMI instead of VGA?

[cribbj]

Not a car question, but I know many car guys are into PC's also.

Has anyone tried connecting their PC to a flat screen monitor using the HDMI interface (ie HDMI to HDMI native, no converter boxes)?

What sort of display quality did you get?

Would it be useable for email, and doing some general work in MS Office?

I'm thinking of dumping my 8 year old, 9lb laptop and going with a 2lb Nettop box, like the Zotac MAG, or the Acer Revo, and using the HD monitors in the hotel rooms for displays, and packing a folding keyboard, or possibly one of those virtual laser dohickeys.

Have looked at netbooks, but just can't get happy with their keyboards, plus I need an eSATA port to make full use of my Kanguru eSATA flash drive.

I could go with a full size laptop, which would have everything I need, but then it would come with a full size weight penalty too, and I'm trying to cut down my carryon load.

 

[a.Lpha]

I use a PC hooked up to a Sony LCD as a computer monitor for my desktop at home daily. The quality is fantastic, especially if the display is good as well. It's literally like using any other cable, only DVI + HDMI are infinitely superior to anything else.

On the subject of netbooks though, I bought one about a year ago and was so disappointed with it i gave it away. They are really too slow and small to be useful for anything.

 

[cribbj]

Thanks a.Lpha; I know that the older netbooks were pretty mediocre in most respects, but the newer dual core Atoms, with the nVidia Ion graphics are pretty snappy, especially when the platform is coupled with a SSD and running Win7.

I'm not a gamer, nor a 3D CAD user, and need something that'll work for me at home (MS Office to maintain full compatibility with my data + Internet browsing & occasional YouTube and PhotoBucket vids) as well as be useable when I'm commuting to & from my workplace.

Glad to hear the HDMI interface works well; that means I should be able to use the flat screen HD TV's in the hotel rooms.

 

[V8Datto]

Just a note,

I'm not 100% sure but,
While a HDMI cable will run a LCD TV perfectly (Like many have done including myself) they lack the anti glare that a computer monitor has.

I have found that if I sit close up and use the LCD TV as a monitor I get a headache after about an hour. It may just be my TV as I'm sure lot of people do it with no problems.

I've noticed that there is a big difference between one image being shown on both PC monitor and LCD TV.
The LCD TV is a lot brighter and has much more vivid colors

 

[cribbj]

Here's the hardware I'm thinking about:

The system unit is the bare bones Zotac MAG unit, which measures around 7.5" x 7.5" x 1.5" and weighs only 3 lbs:


It comes with a slow 5400 RPM, 160 GB Toshiba HD, which will be replaced by an Intel X-25 Mainstream G2, 80GB Solid State Disk for the C drive (OS and programs only):


I already keep all my data on this 64GB Kanguru flash drive, which has eSATA and USB connections. It's a pretty fast flash drive, even on the USB port - much better than my old Kingston DataTraveler 400. At home and at work, I have it hard configured as an "F" drive so it stays out of the way of DVD drives and hotplug USB devices:


Then I'll bump the memory to 4GB, add a foldable Bluetooth KB and travel mouse, loadup Win7 & MS Office and hopefully be ready to roll with a faster, more capable platform than my old Pentium M laptop, and having saved 5-8 lbs or so in my carryon.

 

[mshawari1]

I’ve try to connect the PC to 42" LCD. The VGA quality was very bad
The DVI and HDMI show huge difference with good quality.
But you have set away from the monitor since it will not be very clear due to the fact that the TV LCD has less density of pixel comparing with PC LCD.

 

[a.Lpha]

okay, fair enough, that looks pretty good... most people who say netbook get something god awful.

and i don't think that's the case with HDTV's im afraid it's just yours i have a 32" on my desk that i use as a monitor and it's clear as day from any angle. It could be some settings wrong perhaps?

 

[cribbj]

The little Zotac and Intel SSD turned up today, along with the Matias foldable Bluetooth KB and a Logitech BT mouse.

The Zotac case was a bear to get into - the cover had 20 little clips around its perimeter that had to be pried clear of the main case before it would come off, then the MB had to be removed to get access to the screws holding the HD in.

It was sorta like working on a laptop, but worse..... Anyway, I got the conventional HD out finally, and the Intel SSD in, and tomorrow it'll get its 4GB memory upgrade, then we'll load up Win7 and see how it goes.

 

[Thermactor]

It depends on the kind of monitor you hook up to. If you're using a 1080i plasma monitor, text will look like crap and be unreadable. If you're hooking up to an LCD, your image will look good and crisp.

 

[a.Lpha]

Hope it works out okay!

 

[cribbj]

I'm using the new little machine now. I have my 24" screen hooked up to the HDMI port and the text is crystal clear.

It booted in 45 seconds from the press of the power button, to the Win7 login screen, and from login to My Desktop was 5.5 seconds.

The Base performance score in Win7 shows 3.3, however the primary hard disk transfer rate is 7.8, which I understand, is supposed to be pretty snappy. I don't know much else about these scores.

Overall I'm very pleased with it. It's much faster than my old laptop, and it "feels" as fast as the big quad core Pentium that my wife uses, but I'm sure that's due to the super quick SSD. Probably if I asked it to do some serious number crunching it would choke a bit. The really nice thing about it is that it's nearly noiseless, and it's only about the size of a novel.

I'm only using the USB side of the Kanguru drive at the moment. It'll be interesting to see how fast the eSATA side is. I need to get a USB extension cable to hook that up, because it needs to take power from a USB port while it's hooked up to the eSATA port for data transfer.

 

[cribbj]

Just tested both the eSATA and USB sides of the Kanguru drive when I copied a file from it to the C drive. In USB mode, it copied at a rate of 32 MB/sec, and in eSATA mode it was 85 MB/sec.

So a 3+ GB file got copied in a little less than 2 minutes using the USB port, and about 45 seconds using the eSATA. Pretty speedy little flash drive.

 

[a.Lpha]

I'm going to order myself one of flash drives! You're a fine salesman!

 

[cribbj]

I got really frustrated reading all the tests of the flash drives 'cause they just weren't indicative of real world use. For example, my old Kingston DataTraveler 400's ranked pretty high in all the tests I read, but they "neglected" to mention an annoying lag or latency issue with these drives. So annoying in fact, that I found them nearly unuseable. Like waiting 5-10 seconds sometimes for a folder to open?

I've found the Kanguru has none of these issues and is really snappy. Highly recommended from "real world" use!