A personal computer is no good without a good monitor. Sure, computers are great at number crunching but most of the time we are surfing the net, dealing with email, viewing photos or videos and that requires a decent monitor. Many computers come with a monitor but you may want to upgrade, and very often great deals in computers come monitor free. How can you get a really good monitor for not much money, or better yet for free?
Now anyone can plunk down money for a monitor and buy whatever they want, and if you are short o time and long on money this is a reasonable thing to do, but there are plenty of existing monitors out there that won’t cost much.
First of all, older monitors use CRT or Cathode Ray Tube technology and are big, bulky, and heavy, but many of them have large screens and absolutely wonderful graphics quality. Once you get the heavy beasts in place they absolutely rock. You can often get these for free! Yes, it’s pretty amazing but people dump perfectly great monitors for the latest and greatest, that might not even be better quality! In my town you actually have to pay the dump ten dollars for them to take your monitor! So, where do you find one of these monitors? Look online locally is the best bet. Try Craigslist and Freecycle.org for example, and you just may find someone giving a great monitor away or selling it dirt cheap. It works; I’ve done it and got a 24″ somewhat heavy monitor with years of life left in it and absolutely wonderful video quality!
Modern monitors use LCD or Liquid Crystal Display Technology, and are also call flat screen monitors. Their biggest advantage is not video quality, but size and weight. They are thin and light. They can also cost quite a bit of money, but you can find decent ones online for around $100. Of course you can also look for used ones on Craigslist and eBay, and refurbished models are also a good bet; try some of the major vendor websites like Dell Computer.
I like to look on Amazon for LCD monitors that are selling at a very deep discount. You may need to look a few times, but this often means the monitor has been discontinued and they are dumping the very few they have left at a very cheap price.
