4K displays get affordable for Cyber Monday

I’m not quite ready to upgrade to a 4K (4096×2160 resolution) monitor yet, but if you are, Samsung’s 28″ 4K display is on sale for $400 (down from $700) for Cyber Monday.

At that size and resolution, it works out to 165 pixels per inch, which is very close to what we used to call “near letter quality” in the days of dot matrix printers. To me, this seems more practical than using a 42″ 4K television, and the refresh rate is much better.

Keep in mind you do need Displayport to drive a 4K display. Most video cards costing $100 and up have those these days, but even some Geforce 210 cards have them, like this Jaton.

Beware the Black Friday electronics

Beware the Black Friday electronics

Ars Technica ran an aptly timed article today called How to talk your family out of bad consumer electronics purchases. It’s definitely worth a read, to steer you away from bad Black Friday electronics.

There’s a great tip in the article. If a doorbuster item has a model number that isn’t available the rest of the year, you don’t want it. That’s a good rule.

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How to calculate what a screen’s specs don’t tell you

How to calculate what a screen’s specs don’t tell you

If you want to quickly and easily calculate the pixels per inch of a display, here’s a useful tool:

http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html

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