screen resolutions and eye strain

[Walter W. Giesbrecht]

The eyestrain may have more to do with posture, the chair, glare on 
the screen, etc., that screen resolution. I have worked on a 15-inch 
screen set at 1024x768 for several years with no problem. Many of my 
colleagues have trouble working at that resolution, but it's probably 
due to the rather small size of the text. Once you get used to 
it, it's hard to go back.

Another major cause of eyestrain is the refresh rate of the monitor. 
If it is set too low, the constant flickering will certainly give you 
headaches, among other things. Problem is, the way to fix it is 
particular to the monitor, so I can't tell you how to change it in 
your situation. There may be a utility that allows you to adjust the 
refresh rate (e.g., on Dell PCs, the program MONITOR.EXE is usually 
found in a \DELL subdirectory; it may be elsewhere, of course).

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Walter W. Giesbrecht                        walterg at yorku.ca    
York University Libraries          (416) 736-5639 ext. 77551
North York, Ontario, Canada