What can the LCD option do for me?

I just purchased the Folger Prusa i3 kit from eBay. It will arrive late this month (Nov) I hope.
But I am wondering what the optional LCD display offers.
What can I do with it?
What will it tell me?
Can I use a PC instead?
Any links to info or your assessment would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

What the LCD display lets you do is put the gcode from you slicer on an SD memory card, like a camera card, and run the entire print from the LCD instead of having any PC connected. It's also great for letting you jog the x,y and z steppers and test the extruder and bed temp right at the printer without a PC being in the mix to cause problems, problems like not being able to connect to the printer's electronics because there is a speed issue or driver issue. It's nice to know the printer is working instead of wondering if the PC is the issue.

A PC will work as well but if you have any issues with crashing or the like or want to use it for other things there is always a chance you could crash you print job. Now if you have a spare PC you can dedicate, like an old laptop running linux you could just plop that down next to the printer and print away.

The LCD is also kinda cool looking in a darkened room while a print is going

Folgers offers both, here is the one I got from them [www.ebay.com]

I thought it was worth the extra 5 bucks for the graphical version instead of the text only.

If you can wait you can always try bidding on the Chinese version on ebay, I've seen them as low as 9.99 with free shipping.

You'll probably want to print a case at some point, here is the one I got from thingiverse [www.thingiverse.com]

I also have the folger Prusa i3 kit, and I purchased their graphic LCD as well. It's great for getting immediate control of the printer,
adjusting temperature while a print is going, makes it very handy. No need to worry about your laptop crashing mid print if you load
the sd card with your gcode, and print from the sd card... i think this is a great upgrade, and I had no issues with the folger full graphic lcd.
it comes with the knob for the selector, and the cables and adapter board for Ramps 1.4

cheers.

Does the lcd give you current x, y and z values? Current temperatures? Errors, warnings, any other data updates while printing?

I'm not sure of the errors or warnings but yes to the others. The graphic one I have shows the extruder and bed temps along with the target temps. It also shows the amount of time since starting the print and the fan speed.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2014 02:02PM by Wpflum.

A couple of other things, mine has a button and a rotary control, the button is an emergency stop everything and the rotary control allows changing the speed of the print so you can speed up or slow down from the default rate coded in the gcode during a print, very handy in case your defaults seem too slow or too fast for what you are printing. The rotary control is also used as a menu/item selector with pushing it down to trigger the selection.

It can give you errors and warnings also!