First post, by Great Hierophant
- Rank
- l33t
TFT Monitors stink for playing classic games on them. DOS games were made for display on CRT monitors. One of the few advantages a CRT still has over a TFT monitor is that it has no native resolution. On a TFT, images will appear much more sharp on the device's native resolution than on any other it may support.
A CRT has a range of resolutions which it can look good in. The resolutions it can look good in are limited by the dot pitch and size of the monitor and the resolutions and refresh rates the monitor was designed to handle. A CRT handles low resolutions alot better than a TFT. DOS games typically use resolutions like 320x200 and 640x480, which are very low to modern TFTs. In fact, for a resolution lower than 640x480, most TFTs will upscale it to 720x400. A CRT has no problem displaying those resolutions and giving an even stretch so that the image takes up the whole screen. Each scanline is the same size, each pixel the same width across.
With 4:3 ratio monitors becoming harder to find with standalone TFTs and almost impossible with laptops, we can lose the proper aspect ratio, deal with the proper aspect ratio with large pillarboxing or uneven stretching or stretch the image unnaturally. I always prefer my pixels to be of the same size and in the proper aspect ratio Many, many Windows games do not support widescreen modes as well. Support for 16:9/10 modes is, except for a few rare anomalies, is a 21st Century innovation in computer games.
Keyboards are a subject with which I have a particular passion. In my opinion, the two best keyboard manufacturers were IBM and Northgate. IBM set the gold standard for quality manufacturing, I am typing this on a 1986-vintage Model M. Nortgate made fabulous programmable keyboards that were compatible with virtually every important machine. Both were clicky keyboards and solidly constructed. They used real mechanical switches, not the mushy rubber domes or membrane keyboards of today's machines.
These keyboards had full size keys, not the scrunched function keys and tiny arrow and editing keys of today's laptops and desktop keyboards. People no longer like the 3x2 arrangement of the editing keys, or think that there need to be silly curved keys. People are using keyboards more often now than ever before, but it seems the quality of said keyboards is going down the tubes. How are people supposed to learn how to type or want to type on crap?
IBM's 101 Model M keyboard is, overall, the best keyboard layout mankind has yet devised.
For laptops, I hate nothing more than unevenly sized keys. I think a standard layout should be as follows. First, you should decide to keep the editing, cursor and seldom used keys or a numeric keypad, but not both. There are enough keys for each function on the numeric keypad. Have a module that can be plugged in on the side for the extra keys. Second, the only changes that should be made to the 101 key-keyboard is to put a (letter-sized) Windows key between the left Alt and Ctrl and a Menu key between the right Alt and Ctrl. Better still, since the menu key can be simulated by a Ctrl + Esc, why not just use a Fn key on the left side and a Windows key on the right?
