NOTES FOR THE MEETING ON 16th March
We will be looking in detail at the display options in the control panel, and will be going into greater depth than is covered in the book. In particular, we will be looking at screen resolution and refresh rate, so let's have some definitions.
The screen you look at consists of many thousands of dots, or pixels. Each pixel can only display a single colour at any given time.
The refresh rate is the speed with which the display can be changed. It consists of two figures, the horizontal rate, which is set by the monitor, and the vertical rate, which is a function of both your monitor and your video controller in your computer.
The resolution is the number of pixels across the screen, the number vertically, and the number of colours. The first two are functions of both your monitor and video controller, the last purely of your video controller. A resolution is normally given as, say 640x480x16. This means 640 pixels across, 480 pixels down and 16 colours. This particular resolution is the base; the bare minimum standard, and one which all equipment can manage. Nowadays, all monitors and video cards are capable of considerably better. There are fixed combinations of resolutions. The commonest are:
640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1200x960, 1600x1200
The number of colours can be 16 (4 bit) 256 (8 bit) 65536 (16 bit) or 4294967296 (32 bit)
Base resolution is 60Hz. This is a function more of the monitor than the video card. At 60Hz, the display can be seen to flicker. A rate of 75Hz, or 85Hz, if the monitor is capable of it, gives a steadier, crisper display. Which resolution you choose for your own system is up to you; it doesn't make much sense to have a resolution greater than 800x600 on a 14" monitor or 1024x768 on a 15" monitor. 16 bit or 32 bit colour is vastly superior to 8 bit.
Unfortunately, I am very limited in what I can demonstrate to you, as our projector is limited to 640x480 at 60 Hz, although it has no restriction on the number of colours.
Once we have disposed of the display applet, we'll look at how you can customise your mouse. We'll then talk about formatting diskettes (floppy disks), which I can demonstrate quite happily, and also show you other ways of formatting other than what's in the book.
For those of you who don't yet have the text book, I will bring a few photocopies.
See you Saturday!
Just to remind you,
THERE WILL BE NO MEETING ON 23RD MARCH
The next full meeting is on Saturday April 6th. There will be a question and answer session (surgery) on Saturday March 30th.
If you have any suggestions, please e-mail them to me at questions@billnot.com before the meeting if possible, so that I can think about them!