1) There is such a thing as a USB-connected monitor, but they are pretty rare. Most new monitors these days will use one or more of the following connectors, in order of popularity:
- HDMI - DisplayPort - DVI - VGA Manufacturers are increasingly making monitors that no longer have VGA on them, but most lower-end ($80 - $120) monitors still have VGA, which is probably going to be easiest for you. 2) I don't think you will have any trouble with that at all. I don't use SuSE myself, but worked pretty closely with someone who uses it on a 5 year old laptop with constant plugging and unplugging of external monitors and it handled everything he could throw at it that I ever saw. 3) Get whatever is on sale *and* has good ratings from MicroCenter, NewEgg, or Amazon. In general, I first use the search tools on NewEgg and/or MicroCenter to find possibilities, then I look at those models on Amazon to see if they have a better price. *Do not* trust reviews on Amazon - Amazon often bundles the reviews for several models into a single page, meaning that a) it's very hard to tell what reviews are relevant and b) many people end up leaving reviews for the wrong model. 4) I'm going to echo the sentiment about monitor stands. I bought a very cheap dual-monitor arm that allows significantly more adjustment of my screens than the bases that come with the monitors themselves. To save money, most monitor makers produce stands that only have a tilt adjustment - as a tall person, that puts the monitor way too low for me. My father has his monitor propped up on phone books (still a use for them in this age of the internet!), but I bought a stand. As I mentioned, I have dual monitors, but you can get a single-monitor version too (or triple or quad). Of course, all of this assumes the problem is your monitor only. If your video card is also going, then you'll need a new one, of course. The best thing to do in that case is hit the SuSE forums for compatibility discussions. There are likely people there who have much more experience with hardware. (My hardware expertise is limited to Windows and Ubuntu.) Moshe -- Moshe Katz mmk...@umd.edu (301) 867-3732 On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 7:49 PM, Howard Sanner < linux-au...@terrier.ampexguy.com> wrote: > Once again I'm going to presume upon your collective good nature. > > My home computer has an intermittent video problem. The monitor is a NEC > Multisync FE700+ connected to some kind of video card. The symptoms are > that sometimes when the video is restored after the screensaver has kicked > in the image is very bright and lacks contrast. Focus also seems to be > affected. For a while, powering down the monitor for half an hour or so > would take care of the problem. The last few days I've had to power down > the whole computer and even then sometimes the problem persisted. > > So it's clearly time to get a new video setup, even if I don't like the > flat screen monitors. I've had this stuff since ca. 2000 and it doesn't owe > me a thing. > > Questions: > > 1. How do currently made monitors plug into the CPU? Is it by USB > connector? (I'm assuming I really don't need a video card, but maybe I do.) > > 2. What's going to be involved in getting a two-odd year old version of > SuSE Linux to recognize the new video configuration and work properly with > it? > > 3. Any suggestions for specific hardware? > > 4. What else do I need to know but am not smart enough to ask? > > Thanks for your help. > > Howard Sanner > apxl...@terrier.ampexguy.com >
