Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(4 customer reviews) 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Solid monitor,
July 11, 2010 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: ViewSonic VA705B 17-Inch LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)
Pros:
* Not widescreen
* 75 refresh
* 1280x1024 native res
* Easy on the eyes
* Small footprint
* Great for multi-monitor setup
Negatives:
* 17" instead of 19" but I knew I was buying 17, just wanted a 19 with similar specs, most 19s are widescreen though
* Green power light (I like blue, I know, nitpicking)
* Not true black exterior (dark gray, I know, nitpicking again)
Get it!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Great budget monitor,
August 21, 2010 D. Sauer "Unix Geek" - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: ViewSonic VA705B 17-Inch LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)
I have three of these monitors. I bought one almost two years ago for my eeePC (it's now on a desktop system), and recently I bought two more to use on a dual-head Linux system. It cost less to buy two of these than one large wide-screen monitor, and I get more screen real estate with two 4:3 monitors than I would with a single 16:9 anyway. Since I do more programming / shell interaction (as a sysadmin) and I play few games, the bar in the middle is not a drawback. :) These monitors reproduce color well, are plenty bright, and work pretty much flawlessly. The only issue I have is that they automatically dim some when the screen is more black, and brighten up when the screen is more non-black. It's just a little weird when switching from a mostly empty terminal to one filled with text; GUI environments with desktop images / colors will not bring that out much or at all. And it's really just a little bit of a dimming - not like a child standing next to the dimmer switch on the...Read more
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Backplane light misbehaves,
July 14, 2010 Richard R. Slater - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: ViewSonic VA705B 17-Inch LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)
This monitor looks great whenever it is showing a 1024x768x16 or better graphics display (Windows Explorer, Linux X windows), but when it is necessary to display pure text, such as the BIOS messages seen during bootup, or when in Linux terminal mode, the display dims to a very low level that is almost unacceptable. It appears to be a power saving "feature" built into the monitor which cannot be overridden by means of the monitor's OSD controls. None of my other monitors (made by Acer) behave in this way.
If you regularly configure your system while in simple text mode, you may want to consider purchasing a different monitor.
