I just received my Dell E248WFP 24″ flat panel monitor today and I could hardly wait to get it home and hooked up.  Upon opening the rather unassuming Dell box and unpacking the monitor my first thought was that I was going to need some more space on my desk.  This thing is absolutely huge compared to my current 17″ flat panel.  Speaking of which I had always thought my 17″ Samsung Syncmaster 730B flat panel was pretty decent but there is simply no comparison in function, display quality and gaming response now that I have experienced the sheer sexyness that is the Dell E248WFP.

 Games are so much more vivid than they appeared on the Samsung and the text is extremely sharp and clear.  My Dell D820 Latptop has a WUXGA scren running 1920 x 1200 resolution and I had always felt cramped coming to my gaming computer running 1280 x 1024.  There doesn’t seem like there would be much of a difference but being able to fit a 1280 x 1024 screen in just the right half of the 24″ Dell E248WFP opens up whole new worlds in multitasking.  Running at the E248WFP’s native 1920 x 1200 I’m able to have multiple full size browser windows open without having to hide windows or allows me to run games like World of Warcraft in window mode with plenty of room to spare to view webpages or documents or click through song lists.

The Dell E248WFP features a 5ms response time and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. HDCP is no problem for this monitor and it features both an integrated DVI-D and a legacy VGA D-sub connector. Dell’s Truecolor Tecnology offers richer, life-like imagery that has more accurate color representation and better tones and hues. Reds, greens and blues are deeper and more vibrant.  My only complaint about this feature list is that a USB port is not standard fare.  Some people will not like the fact that speakers are not included but in my opinion this monitor is so large that adding speakers would put it over the top for most desktops.

The best part of this outstanding monitor is the price.  At around $450 MSRP this flat panel is perfect for home or even small business use however Dell currently has them on sale for an absolute steal at $379 making this a true score.

The website was getting pretty stale and I hadn’t really updated it in a couple of years so I decided it was time to do a redesign. I’ve added some functionality like my new Rogue Reviews blog which I’ll use to share my experiences on things like movies I’m watching, restaurants I’m visiting, games I’m playing etc… I’ll even have a couple of my friends posting some of their reviews on various things.

There are still a few pages on the site that need updating but I’ll get to them quickly. I’ve been learning a lot about Cascading Style Sheets and I’m happy for the oportunity to put that new information to use updating the older HTML pages. It is taking some time to get it all straight but once finished it will be much easier to update.

–Digital Rogue

Not having a chance to read the book series before seeing the screen adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles I went into the viewing with zero expectation and no predetermined notions of how the movie should be.

The storyline revolves around the experiences of the children of Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) a newly divorced mother who inherits her uncle’s forest secluded mansion. The daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger) and the two twin sons Simon and Jared (Freddie Highmore) find themselves fighting a fantastic battle against goblins, trolls and a mighty ogre after unwittingly calling their attention to a book full of secret information regarding all types of mystical and magical creatures.

The storyline is engaging but short. As I understand it the book series consists of five novels and to condense that into a 90 minute movie means a lot must have been left out of the movie. The computer generated graphics for all of the mystical creatures was par for a movie these days without nothing really standing out either good or bad.

If you like fantasy films you will probably enjoy the film however if you are a fan of the books you may be dissapointed by the lack of substance in the film.

I give The Spiderwick Chronicles a 6 Rogueys out of 10.