Computer Screens and Colors

[Morgan Paul]

Dear Bob,

I understand your problem, but at my library it is a little different
problem.  I recently had a rash of trouble calls all on the same day with
several staff computers.  It seems that some of the staff loaded a program
that required the colors to be 256.  So anything that was using higher
resolution either looked terrible or was a black screen.  The program they
loaded wouldn't work unless the color was set to 256.  

I know that I have most of our public monitors set to 16bit color.  This is
NOT the case in the children's room.  For some reason their software
requires 256 more than other software.

Does anyone know of a workaround for this?  I just made the staff aware of
what was happening and they change their settings as needed.  I can't do
that for the public computers.  Those settings are locked - intentionally. 

Morgan Paul
Carnegie Public Library
East Liverpool, Ohio 43920
paulmo at mail.oplin.lib.oh.us


>Another thing I noticed was that the monitor being used was capable of
1280 x 1024 resolution at 24-bit color yet was configured to run at 640 x
480 8-bit color.  This raised a question:  Why spend all those precious
dollars on display controllers and high-resolution monitors if you're going
to run them in a low-resolution low color mode?  It seems like a waste of
resources to me.
>
>I'd like to hear from libraries who have intentionally setup their systems
for 640x480 256 colors to better understand why this is.
>