DVI vs VGA

The way I’m currently set up, I have my old beastly desktop hooked in to the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse that I use for my MacBook Pro when they’re both sitting at my desk. I use a little USB KVM switch (in case you didn’t see enough acronyms yet) to flip between the computers.

However, I don’t use the switch for the monitor, because that means I wouldn’t be able to use the DVI at all. For the longest time I had the DVI cable plugged in to the laptop (because it has no VGA port) and the VGA plugged in to my old XP desktop.

But, in preparation for getting my new desktop built, which has no VGA port, I plugged the DVI cable in to the desktop and used a converted to plug VGA into the laptop.

Holy crap it makes a difference. On this monitor (1680x1050), the VGA signal from my desktop was a fuzzy and dark. It didn’t bug me much when I was playing games, so I didn’t mess with it. But while it showed the desktop, this computer looked old and beat up. It made me want to be done with it.

But DVI…it looks all snazzy and new again. The image is crisp—I could practically cut steak with the font on my desktop. What a difference having a good picture makes.