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The monitor is the part of the system that you look at most of the time. Monitors resemble televisions. Most computer monitors use the same technology as televisions, but with much higher resolution. Often the monitor will come packaged with a computer system, but you may wish to upgrade.
The size of a monitor can make a big impact. You might get a headache squinting at a screen that is too small. The size of a monitor is measured in diagonal inches. a 15 inch monitor is 15 inches diagonally from corner to corner of the screen.
Monitors are also measured by their precision. There are two main measures, Dot Pitch, and DPI.
Dot pitch is a measure of the size of each tiny dot the monitor can display. The smaller each dot is, the nicer the picture will look, but the more expensive the monitor will be. When discussing Dot Pitch, SMALLER IS BETTER!!
DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. As you can guess, the smaller the dot pitch rating for a monitor is, the more of those tiny dots you could squeeze into a square inch. If you are considering DPI, LARGER IS BETTER.
Computer sales people are not above taking advantage of this confusion.
Dealing with graphics takes a lot of work. Modern computers usually have a separate computer built in just to help with controlling the monitor. This little computer has its own cpu and memory! The power and speed of this little computer, as well as its memory capacity, have a huge effect on how graphics are drawn to your screen. This little computer is referred to as a graphics controller card. The most common cards now are called SVGA. (You really don't need to know what it stands for but here goes: Super Video Graphics Array). Of course it gets way more complicated than this, but all you have to know is that there are fancier cards that do more and cost more, but you may not need the fanciest one out there for your first computer.