Digital BW, The Print

Dear  AnneMarie,

I owned an Apple Cinema Display for many years, but the monitor became
unusable in its fourth year, and I replaced the monitor with an Eizo CG241W.
If you care about DDC compliant monitors, you might consider the Ezio, but
pay specific attention to their warranty statement, since their warranty is
great but stringent. Many users might argue that the calibration software
that comes with the monitor is good, but I still prefer to use a quality
third party application for that task. The Eizo monitor is fabulous...

The Apple Cinema Display performed admirably, while calibrated with
ColorEyes Software, and although I did not repurchase a new Apple LED
monitor, a new Samsung XL24, or a new Lacie 724, I decided to wait until the
latest LED monitors mature with age, along with the required calibration
software. LED monitors will become the next monitor generation quickly.

ColorEyes calibration software will support the newer LED monitors from
Samsung and Lacie, and the LED Eizo when it appears, but it was my choice to
wait for two or three years until the LED technology matures. These LED
monitors are DDC compliant, where the software calibrates the monitor¹s
onboard hardware, allowing the computer¹s video card to simply push the
pixels to the DDC compliant monitor.

The Apple display monitor will perform well, but as you know, you will
require a good calibration tool, to allow the monitor to perform better. The
Apple monitor is not DDC compliant, therefore, the calibration software will
tweak your computer¹s video card to adjust the monitor, accordingly.

One last item that many folks do not know, and should know, is that Apple
inadvertently broke the DDC compliant protocol with OSX 10.5.6, so do not
use any DDC compliant monitor with that version of OSX. It just won¹t work.
You can use a DDC compliant monitor with OSX up to 10.5.5, where a fix is
expected in 10.5.7 and, or Snow Leopard.

It should also be noted that OSX 10.5.2 and greater, while using a DDC
compliant monitor with OSX¹s screen saver, causes your DDC compliant profile
to become disconnected, but that issue is easily reconciled by using the LUT
Loader in your Mac after the screen saver is finished. These issues do not
occur while using an Apple monitor since the monitor is not DDC compliant.

The calibrated Apple monitor will perform well, and within budget, but a
calibrated DDC compliant monitor is rather stunning...

jim k



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