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AUSTIN, TEXAS - IBM Corp. is poised to throw its first highresolution LCD into the general-purpose monitor arena. The move comes as experts continue to debate the promises and pitfalls of high-res displays.
IBM this month will release a 20.8-inch, 123-pixel/inch device based on Roentgen LCD technology, which the company first discussed roughly two years ago. Packing a 2,048 x 1,536pixel quad-XGA (QXGA) format into a 20.8-inch diagonal screen, the monitor will be available in May at a price point of around $6,000.
The high cost of high resolution was an issue at the recent DisplaySearch FPD Conference & High Resolution Symposium here. While academicians and human-factor researchers working in industry testified to the increased productivity that highresolution displays can bring, executives questioned whether the displays' higher price tags would have perceived value in mainstream markets.
Most of the participants at the Austin conference agreed that the lack of a supporting high-resolution infrastructure has stranded early displays.
One challenge is that operating systems are by and large pixel-oriented and most applications are written for XGA formats, assuming a screen with about a 96-pixel/inch resolution. In this environment, hi-res screens suffer from the "shrinking icon" problem: Icons simply lose legibility when shown on the smaller, more tightly packed pixels of a hi-res screen.
Presenters at the conference also decried the "confused mouse" cursor-navigation problems that operating systems confront on systems that use hires screens; screen clipping and overwrites; and the waste of pixels that results when a conventional Web page is unable to...