Two week review. - Computer
Posted on: 2008-05-05 12:52:22

It has been a little over two weeks since I got my new monitor (Sceptre X20), and I have good and bad things to say about it. I got it about an hour after my last post, hooked it up, scanned for dead pixels, and started running videos and pictures to see the difference in contrast. I had no dead pixels, which was a relief, but I really was not impressed with the quality of the picture itself. That is to say, it was still good, but I had kind of been expecting to need a tissue (for the tears of course). A quick run to RadioShack to pick up a $100 Monster DVI cable that had been marked down to less that $10 (you know, how much it is probably worth) and I tried again. The difference was amazing. I had some trouble believing how much the picture improved...so I switched back to vga again, and then quickly back. I was convinced that vga was dead to me.

So, a few days went by, and problems started popping up. I am a computer on all the time kind of guy (should that be hyphenated?). I do, however, shut off the monitor and the speakers. Now the problems arose when I would come back the next day and turned the monitor on. No signal. YAY! At first I paniced and thought the monitor died. I shut everything down, checked connections, and brought everything back up, and it worked fine. I played with it and nothing popped up as a problem, so I just assumed that the computer locked up, and went about my day. Yeah, it kept happening. I started looking the issue up, and at first it looked like a common issue with this monitor. Some more research made the issue seem far more widespread, and basically narrowed it down to an incompatability between older video cards and DVI. Not technically a problem with the monitor, but one that would not have been discovered had it not been for the purchase.

A quick fix would be to get a new video card or to leave the monitor on. There are 3 things I won't upgrade on my current computer: memory, processor, and video card. There words sum up my reasoning: end of life. My computer is old, not horribly old, but old. The motherboard needs to be upgraded before these other three integral components are upgraded. And since I have no plans on getting a new motherboard anytime soon, I will just leave my monitor on...unless I am shutting down my computer.

So...
Posted: 2008-05-06 19:13:50, by Rook

...if I wanted a monitor just like it I would have to replace the video card wouldn't I? The other question is what about the other things?

VGA?
Posted: 2008-05-07 05:46:55, by Joe (dad-in-law)

Maybe if you went back to VGA you wouldn't have this problem (I suspect that this won't happen).

Joe

.
Posted: 2008-05-07 07:39:36, by talam

Since I think you are using the same monitor, yes, if you are hooking it up to DVI, no, if you are hooking it up with VGA. As to the second question...what about the other things?

If I switch back to VGA everything works fine, it just does not look nearly as good.

The other things.
Posted: 2008-05-07 20:53:03, by Rook

If I got the same monitor that you got and I ran into the same problems that you are having, would I too have to replace my video card to use it without annoyances (or the problems your having) and in turn upgrade my processor and motherboard like you would have too in order to upgrade your video card? This is the other things I was talking about. End of life? What exactly do you mean by that anyways?

End of life.
Posted: 2008-05-07 23:32:52, by talam

An end of life product is something that is still being sold new, but is either not being manufactured or is close to stopping manufacuring. A good example would be HD DVDs. The drives and movies are not being made in any substantial amount but you can still buy them in some stores. There is typically nothing wrong with end of life stuff, it is just being replaced with something new and shiney.

As for the upgrade, I don't have to upgrade my motherboard, proc, and ram. I could get a new video card, but I am limited to AGP video cards. And while there is nothing wrong with AGP cards, it is kind of dying. AGP is slowly being supplanted by PCI Express. The spiffier, high end cards are PCI Express. Any new computer I build will be PCI Express for this reason, so I don't want to dump any money in the inside of my current computer.

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