After a little over a decade, Azathoth, my old desktop PC, has finally been retired. Of course, almost all of Azathoth had been replaced over the course of its lifetime so not all of it was actually 10 years old, but it still retained the original CPU and the rest of the system didn’t represent particularly dramatic upgrades to the original specifications.

The new machine, Eihort, is by the standards of its era a slight step down from its predecessor. While Azathoth was a fairly high-end machine, just below the cut-off point where the price starts rocketing for only minimal gain, Eihort is a more comfortably mid-range offering. But my computing requirements have changed over the past decade: whereas then I was a keen gamer, these days I play games only occasionally. In part this is because Azathoth was very limited in what it would run but also because I spend more time on other interests these days and so have little time left for playing computer games. The new machine is still respectable enough and should cope with most games for the next few years.

What will not be a major upgrade, however, is the screen. I am currently using a 19″ CRT monitor running at 1600×1200 resolution. I got it second-hand but I think it’s about eleven or twelve years old. And in most respects it works fine. The only problem is that because it uses an analogue VGA connection to the computer, HDCP-restricted video will not play on it (although there are ways around this limitation). Also, the monitor is bulky, and replacing it with a thinner flatscreen display would allow me to have a larger screen while still freeing up space on my desk. An LCD monitor would probably use less power than a CRT. And there are a few scratches near the bottom of the screen that although not particularly obvious are very occasionally annoying.

But looking into replacing it I discovered something that I was already dimly aware of. Screen resolutions for computer monitors have become almost completely standardised at 1920×1080. Aside from the cheap 18″ option (which was only 1366×768), all of the monitors that were available when I was ordering my new PC were at this resolution. It is still possible to get 1600×1200 monitors, but they are usually very expensive and are often old models using outdated screen technology.

There are some advantages to this resolution. In particular, it’s the same resolution as an HD television and so for watching films it’s certainly advantageous. Also, strictly speaking, the pixel count is slightly higher than on a 1600×1200 screen, but it’s only an 8% increase (2,073,600 versus 1,920,000). And the positioning of those extra pixels matters. For a lot of day-to-day activities, that extra area at the edge of the screen is dead space. For web browsing, losing height in exchange for more width just makes things more awkward. Same for image viewing/editing, or word processing. For games it’s a mixed bag: some benefit while others don’t, especially older games that weren’t designed for a widescreen aspect ratio and may not scale properly onto such a screen.

Eventually I managed to find a compromise I was reasonably happy with in a 1920×1200 monitor. This combines the width of a standard widescreen monitor with the height of my current display in a 16:10 aspect ratio, so it will be able to accommodate 1080p video without any loss of vertical size.

But it is still interesting that computer monitors have got stuck at this size. Compared with my decade-old monitor, the replacement will have a higher pixel count, but with a larger screen area in both directions, its pixel density will actually be lower. Meanwhile, my phone has a 1080×1920 screen. Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet will have a 1920×1200 display. Move up to 10″ tablets and the 4th-generation iPad’s ‘Retina’ screen is 2048×1536 pixels. Google’s Nexus 10 is even higher at 2560×1600. A computer monitor can easily have double the screen area of a 10″ tablet, so it’s odd that they should typically have so much lower resolutions. OK, so higher-res screens do exist, but they are very expensive specialist items costing many hundreds of pounds.

This xkcd comic was posted around three years ago. It was somewhat apt at the time, but it’s interesting looking at it now. Phones have caught up with HDTV, but monitors are still about the same. I know that there have been advances in screen technology over the past eight years or so. Refresh rates are higher and flatscreens now have viewable angles and representation of colour that is comparable to the CRTs they replaced, all the while getting more energy efficient. But it’s odd that they haven’t also gone up in resolution, especially considering that the displays on mobile devices have.