Power Efficient Computer Monitor Upgrade?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Hopefully this separate thread will eliminate hijacking another.

Many RV'ers including myself use laptops instead of desktop units. But the 17" laptops seem to gobble laptop battery power at an astonishing rate. So here I am with a 15.6"

I start shopping online for a 23" power thrifty monitor, and run into a blizzard of hyperbole and confusion. I do not have HDMI. Merely an old Compaq CQ57 with video connection.

I would prefer a screen resolution as clean as what's on the laptop. But this is up to the video card inside the computer.

Do monitors operate directly off a 12 volt power brick? I would love a 23" monitor that consumes 2.0 amperes of 12 volt power. Or less.

And then, up jumps my ugly troll social insecurity income.

I would love to stick the laptop on a shelf and use the monitor and wireless keyboard with track ball. I would fabricate a stand that allows the monitor to be placed about 30" from me, and then conjure up a sound system with a parts express Lepai audio amplifier and 2 of their 5" speaker bookshelf speakers.

But limited money is the needle that pops the balloon of such dreams. 12 volt power efficiency is key. Or do I run the speaker amplifier through an inexpensive 12 volt car radio amplifier?

The monitor is by far the most important item.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

OK the animation was probably accelerated - just my luck...

[westend]

This amp board (better than the Dayton product but really similar)

Two of these drivers in small boxes.

[MrWizard]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:


Niner! Bookmarked your site! Thank you. Using that phone to me is like parachuting into New York City at night. One false move and I get lost. I need your average 11 year old to learn-me. Jeez all I did was go to Mexico and hide for 25 years - you'd think I went into suspended animation in a glacier or something.

well.. i say not much difference (time warp) except for the aging factor

in suspended animation you would not have aged..!

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Since this thread has morphed it's way from finding a low wattage monitor into gathering all that's needed for a frugalpower system I am offering the following link to an audio product that looks promising. As always I would appreciate comments - warts and all...


http://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-t-amp-and-b652-speaker-bundle--300-650

[atreis]

Almot wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:
I buy my music online here, for dirt cheap... Mp3 music for sale on line, cheaper than dirt.

I have some doubts as to the quality. Have one album downloaded for free, 109 MB of total 4 files/songs, severely compressed, and on this site it's 117 MB. Almost the same.

17GB Micro SD? This will only keep 200 albums at 128 bitrate compression. 200 seems like a lot but you'll want more very soon. Think 32 or 64 GB.

I have doubts about more than the quality - the legality. (I prefer to do my own rips from CD though - I stay legal, and get the quality I want. I rip most things to FLAC.)

X2 on the size - 16GB isn't much, and Micro SD at 32GB isn't much more than 16GB. 64 is still a bit more, but not bad.

[Almot]

NinerBikes wrote:
I buy my music online here, for dirt cheap... Mp3 music for sale on line, cheaper than dirt.

I have some doubts as to the quality. Have one album downloaded for free, 109 MB of total 4 files/songs, severely compressed, and on this site it's 117 MB. Almost the same.

17GB Micro SD? This will only keep 200 albums at 128 bitrate compression. 200 seems like a lot but you'll want more very soon. Think 32 or 64 GB.

[Almot]

Can't help with small speakers. I'm a trailer rat, running MP3 music through the trailer bulit-in speakers. Ask in Technology forum, there are many small speakers with either USB or 3.5mm input or both, either battery or 120V powered or both. From Smartphone you can also have wireless Bluetooth speakers, though I'm old school and believe in hard wiring.

Doesn't Android have FAQ and all kind of guides? How to insert micro SD is explained in any manual. It's usually a slot next to SIM card.

Transferring music files to and from laptop? Should be in FAQ also. Plug the phone into laptop with USB, click on the "disc storage" or whatever it says on Galaxy, and you see a folder with Android files. How to copy-paste or drag and drop files between two folders? You must be kidding. Yes, it should be in MP3 format, I prefer AAC. There are many free programs that will rip (copy) a CD into MP3, even lame Windows Media Center will do it.

Now, downloading free movies and music from the web can be tricky. This is why I'm staying with Win7 and Firefox browser.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Now that I have the monitor specs "en brain", time to start on the sound system. I had a pair of "I Home" USB and battery speakers but they wore out. Don't need to try and reproduce the tibia pedal note of a pipe organ (overture to 2001 A Space Odyssey) but small size big sound and tiny power sounds like I'm in for a long long search.

Niner! Bookmarked your site! Thank you. Using that phone to me is like parachuting into New York City at night. One false move and I get lost. I need your average 11 year old to learn-me. Jeez all I did was go to Mexico and hide for 25 years - you'd think I went into suspended animation in a glacier or something.

[MrWizard]

LCD and LED

It's simple really
LCD do not create light, they control it, color it, like a colored lens in front of stage lights or spot lights

Until recently LCD tv used CFL for lighting
Now many use LED lighting
The newest trend stated a couple years ago, is edge lighting
The LED's are mounted around the perimeter and fiber optic carries the light directly behind the LCD display
This helped make the TV/monitor thinner and allows for blacker blacks and brighter whites, increased contrast and sharper colors

[NinerBikes]

Someone show Mex what a 16 gig micro SD card looks like, and where the slot is for it on his new to him Galaxy S2, por favor. Also show him how to transfer music files with drag and drop, on his laptop computer. Your music needs to be in .MP3 file format.

I buy my music online here, for dirt cheap... Mp3 music for sale on line, cheaper than dirt.

[Almot]

DC-DC booster vs inverter and laptop AC-DC adapter? Some boosters are quite inefficient, like 80% or less. But I don't think this is important. With 1.5-2 hours on laptop a day you will draw 6 or 8AH daily, together with external monitor or TV. The difference between the worst and the best power scenario will be under 1 AH.

You don't have to play Moonlight Sonata from laptop if energy budget is really tight. This can be done on smartphone through the same 3.5mm audio cable. Micro SD card will expand the storage enough to keep several hundred albums at 128 bitrate compression, which is more than adequate quality to play through low-end speakers.

I don't think you need to worry about "outputs" on TV (if you buy TV). What you need is "inputs", and, even if it has HDMI and USB inputs, it also has - usually - VGA for video and RCA for sound. Yes, music from laptop via amplifier and ANY speakers will be better than through TV speakers. My old box of CRT TV with a single mono speaker had better sound than my new LCD Panasonic, because the acoustics of big box is better.

And, about 720p TV that are cheap "because nobody needs it anymore". As 23" monitors - probably so. Computer users are moving over to 1366x768, so 720p TV don't cut it. But a bigger 720p TV is perfectly fine if all you want is watching movies - you will hardly see the difference between 720p and 1080p on 32" screen from 10ft distance.

[mena661]

I have a 23" Samsung and it only has an optical output. The rest are all inputs.

[mena661]

Vizio is a US company, headquartered in Irvine, CA. They're not a Chinese "knock off". Whatever that means. They make pretty good TV's. Viewsonic used to make good monitors back in the day but not anymore. Please research reviews before knocking products. Besides, what electronic device is made solely in the US in the last 30 years?

MEX, there are indeed differences in quality and the higher the price, the better the quality when it comes to monitors/TV. You definitely do get what you pay for BUT you don't have to buy the super high quality stuff to get good quality. I would stay away from the super cheap, non name brand stuff.

I buy the middle of the road stuff typically and that's good enough to last a few years in my experience. I STILL have a Samsung DLP TV as my main TV. Yeah, I have to buy new bulbs every few years but it's 10 years old and works like a champ. It was an upper midrange TV when new. Eventually it will be replaced with a LCD.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I purchased an external USB sound card and it sure helped earphone clarity. I am assuming The Lepai 12-volt amplifier can be fed with this sound card into a pair of external speakers so I don't have to wear earmuffs when listening to Moonlight Sonata or young Strauss. All on a tight energy budget.

I have not yet examined the feasibility of eliminating battery feeding inverter(Samlex 300 PSW) feeding Compaq 19 volt brick feeding laptop and instead use a DC to DC booster directly from battery to laptop at 19 volts.

[Almot]

pnichols wrote:
... and don't forget you gotta have some way of getting sound to it from your laptop ...

Sound is where TV beats monitor. You can get a VGA cable with 3.5mm audio
and have both picture and sound on your TV. New TV might not have 3.5mm input, only red-white RCA audio in (and HDMI that is useless to you). 3.5mm a.k.a. "headphone jack" is a 2-channel stereo. So you will need an adapter 3.5mm Female to RCA red-white Male, it's cheap: if you find it in Mexico 🙂

Or get a monitor and small external speakers.