Comparison of 20.1" LCD Monitors

I wanted to know which display would be better for desktop computing: a normal 1600x1200 pixel display or a widescreen 1680x1050 pixel (HDTV) display. The widescreen, would be more efficient for movies. I remember doing this once before, so I decided to write it out this time. To simplify my analysis, I chose to consider only 20.1" diagonal viewing areas, with the aforementioned resolutions.

For the widescreen, I calculate the display is 17" by 10.6", giving a viewing area of 181.6 square inches. For the 4:3 ratio display, I got 16" by 12" inches, and a viewing area of 193.9 square inches. This is a 6.7% bigger display area for the 4:3 ratio display. More generally, if the diagonal length is fixed, a square maximizes the area of a rectangle.

To compare the resolutions, the widescreen gives 1.76 megapixels, and the 4:3 ratio gives 1.92 megapixels. This is a 9.1% increase in pixel count for the 4:3 ratio display.

In conclusion, you win with the 1600x1200 20.1" non-widescreen display in terms of specifications, but they are generally more expensive (partly due to TFT manufacturing realities) but more compatible with video games (until recently). The wide screen, however, might be a more natural design because of our rectangular viewing perspectives.

Fedora Core 5 + IMAP Server + SquirrelMail

The next best thing, because sharing the Mozilla Thunderbird Storage folder is giving me problems when I change networks, is to have an IMAP server that Thunderbird can store/retrieve messages with.

The mail from the Internet accounts could be copied to the IMAP server using Thunderbird, even if a delivery system (POP/SMTP) is not in place (for mail to get there otherwise). I installed SquirrelMail and tested this capability with Thunderbird already. I closed down sendmail, installed and started postfix. I set up the Cyrus IMAP, which was the hardest part of the IMAP/SquirrelMail setup.

The tutorials I found to help do this on Fedora Core 5 are:

http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/imapd/install.html
http://nakedape.cc/info/Cyrus-IMAP-HOWTO/quickstart-fedora.html
http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_fedora_core_5

The last one shows how to set up SMTP, as does the one from Cyrus itself. I'm still trying to figure out if I can have my own SMTP and use my IP Address (or its alias) as a domain for sending mail to.

Even if I can't, I think that having the IMAP server in place, just for storing mail, would be a big help as the mail would be accessible from anywhere (even using SquirrelMail).

PHP Gas Mileage Application

Here's a little something I wrote out of necessity and decided not to stop before it was completed. I'm pretty proud of it and am surprised how easy PHP was to learn. It basically helps me keep track of my gas mileage over the web so I can throw the receipt out faster, and don't have to carry a spreadsheet around. The following is from the program itself:

This program is a gas mileage database and analyzer written in PHP. It is self-contained (has a single source code file). It stores data in a simple text file in HTTP-query format. It allows users to add new records, and add new data files for different vehicles. It creates a backup before a new record is added. It also implements password protection before users can add refueling records.

Source Code:
Source Code
See it in action