Computer displays: New choices, new tradeoffs: Advances on several fronts let users and designers juggle lightness, brightness, and price as well as much-sought-after flatness

The size and weight of the conventional CRT militate against its use in portable computers. The alternative technologies that are being developed in order to produce flat-panel displays with good resolution are discussed. It is pointed out that the competing technologies all differ from the CRT in one basic way: they rely on a matrix of individually addressable picture elements (pixels) to produce their image, whereas the pixels of a CRT display are defined by the pattern of an electron beam scanning across the phosphor-coated interior of a vacuum tube.