Changing Your Monitor's Resolution

An Introduction
"Resolution" is actually a printing term which refers to the number of "dots" within a given area of print. An image of 300 dpi (dots per inch) is of higher quality than a 72dpi image. Domestic PC monitors display at fixed resolution of 72dpi and "resolution" generally refers to the actual screen area displayed by the monitor. Changing your monitor's resolution does not change the dots per inch value, rather the number of dots that are be displayed; the higher the resolution, the more can be displayed.

Resolution, as far as a PC monitor is concerned, is stated as a pair of figures, representing the amount of dots displayed horizontally and vertically. For example, if your monitor is currently set at 800x600 this means that the screen area is made up of a matrix of 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high.

A few years ago, PC monitors were relatively expensive and so most were only able to support 640x480. However, as the technology improved and the PC became more popular, larger monitors capable of displaying higher resolutions became affordable.

Most new PCs come with video cards set at a resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768 but are capable of going much higher. And it might come as a surprise that many PC users aren't aware that they can change their resolution.

There are benefits of using higher resolutions. Firstly, a higher resolution means that you can "fit" more on the screen, such as a whole A4 page of text in a word processor or more cells in a spreadsheet. Also, higher resolutions generally require a higher screen refresh rate (the speed at which the monitor creates the picture you see on the screen) which gives a better quality screen image and is easier on your eyes (many earlier monitors had very low refresh rates causing migraine and ill-health!).

Many web sites today are built to a resolution of 1024x768. If your monitor is set at a lower resolution then you will notice that such sites disappear to the right of your screen, forcing you to scroll horizontally in order to read the whole page. Setting a higher screen resolution will ensure that you see all the content on the screen at the same time.

Changing Screen Resolution under MacOS

Changing Screen Resolution under Windows