Q: I'm thinking of buying a flat screen monitor but I recall they didn't used to be very good compared to normal, cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors. Is this still the case?

A: LCD technology has advanced in recent years and the monitors are widely admired for their bright and crisp image. Eye strain is also reduced as they don't flicker like the conventional CRT models.

Other advantages are the much smaller amount of space required on the desktop and a considerably lower power consumption.

However in a number of areas, CRT technology wins out. There is a possibility with LCD displays of having dead pixels, which will produce spots of constant colour on the screen. These are not repairable and you may not be able to return your VDU unless it has above a certain number of dead pixels. Many LCD displays are also unsuitable for fast onscreen movement, as they can't refresh quickly enough. This, combined with a generally lower contrast than CRT monitors, makes many models unsuitable for games.

Q: I'm interested in the idea of open source software. Is it practical for a home user who browses the internet a lot and does a lot of word processing to use it? Where do I begin?

A: There are a number of open source programmes that are great for home use. The most popular would be OpenOffice.org (a complete office suite) and Mozilla.org (a great web browser). The term open source means everyone can look at the code and be involved in its development. This often means security problems are fixed far quicker than closed source programmes and open source programmes are freely downloadable over the internet. A good place to find more open source software is www.sourceforge.

net. Many open source programmes are covered by the GNU General Public Licence that defines in legal terms what people can and cannot do with the software. This can be found at www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Q: What is SCSI? I've been told it's the fastest way to use storage.

A: SCSI (pronounced scuzzy) is a method of connecting computer mainboards to hard drives and other devices (CD-Roms, scanners, some high-end music recording devices). SCSI hard drives are more expensive than the more normal ones and usually you'll need to buy and install a separate adapter card in your computer to connect a SCSI drive.

The reason you'd want to do that is because the latest SCSI systems are so much faster than the standard IDE hard drives at transferring data. There are several SCSI standards which makes things confusing, so make sure you buy an adapter card and hard drive that use the same standards.

Ultra 160 and Ultra 320 are the latest standards but are probably too expensive for home use. They are used commonly on web servers. The biggest maker of SCSI adapter cards is Adaptec and most hard drive manufacturers sell SCSI hard drives as well as the normal IDE ones.