Well, at the moment, I'm limited by the laptop's 1024 x 768 res, which means I've moved a lot of stuff about to get a decent sized central image of about 900 x 700 (ish) though I prefer to use 1280 x 1024 (higher makes my desktop icons too small :) as you can get a 1024 x 768 render window onscreen out of that. Though I#m begging to use 3000 x 3000 window for renders these days then scrunching them down with a paint prog. I'm usually in 24bit, though even that is overkill given that the human eye can only differentiate between 50,000 colours at once. My monitor, (at home, sniff! :( is a SUN Microsytems badged Sony, (I think) 21" flatscreen, capable of 1280 x 1024 on a SUN, (because of the 8 bit sense codes) or 1600 x 1200 (and up :) with a PC, got it free, so I'm not complaining :) later jb