I cannot decide if I should get a Widescreen 19" LCD or a regular, and some other things I want to buy....

Question

I also cannot decide if I should get a Notebook Optical Mouse or a Desktop Laser or Optical Mouse (I don't need anything special), whether I should get a Tabletop tripod or a Gorillapod SLR for my Rebel XT, I cannot decide if I should get a Creative X-Fi Fatality, a Sound Blaster, or keep my Realtek AC'97, and last but not least, I cannot decide if I should get a new media player, or a Datel, Max Media Player for my Nintendo DS.

Oh, and by the way, I cannot spend a lot of money on the products, except for the LCD.

I have really good speakers, a 17" (non-widescreen) CRT monitor, a ball mouse (not cordless), I have the latest drivers for both the Graphics adapter, and the Realtek AC'97 Audio, a Sunpak, UT-series tripod (I also have a Manfrotto, I don't know what kind). I have tried to make the refresh rates on my monitor better, but my monitor doesn't support higher than 60 Hz. I have FuzzyLogic 5.0 to overclock my CPU, and don't know what else I should add to the list (and no, I'm not a hardcore PC gamer, so only think about DS ideas). My budget is around a max. of $200 per item.

Answer 1

I can't answer about yout camera tripod. Not a huge camera guy myself. The only difference between a Notebook mouse and a regular mouse, is size. notebook mice are usually much smaller. I don't use them because I don't have tiny little rat claws for hands. Plus it's not like saving 1 inch in length makes the laptop any more portable. Also, I prefer a wireless laser mouse because it is very mobile. The X-Fi Fatality is top of the line. But the question is, are your speakers top of the line? Are your graphics top of the line? I mean what's the point of having 1 top of the line piece when the rest is just average? It's like getting high performance, Z-rated tires at $250 a piece for a car that is only 100horsepower and has a top speed of 130mph. You'll never even get close to using the performance. A regular Soundblaster Live works just fine, and unless you have good speakers or headphones, AC97 is just dandy also.

Tough call on the widescreen or regular. I had to make this decision myself recently. I ended up gettins the 19" regular. There just isn't enough software out there yet that takes advantage of the widescreen feature. Sure, it's great if you watch widescreen movies on yoru computer. And it's great if a game is made to support widescreen. But if the software doesn't support it, you just end up with 2 black strips along the side of the picture. Which isn't good for the following reason: 19" diagonal is 19" diagonal, whether is't widescreen or not. This means that means your actual surface area will be the same. If your software doesn't support widescreen, your picture will be closer to 17" because of the black strips on the side of the picture. So I guess a good question is, do you have, or plan on having soon, software that will look good on widescreen? Hope all that helps! Oh, I don't know Nintendo DS. personally, I have very small screens, so I don't see a point in getting one of those small game machines...... especially since I have a laptop.