the corner office : Swapped m'monitor

Swapped m'monitor

No mess, no fuss. I swapped out my monitor with nary a hassle. This monitor's better than the previous (which had a slightly asymmetric warp), but this one still "bows" ever, ever so slightly (as did the previous monitor). So my only conclusion is that this is how these CRTs are designed, and that's what you get for going with "Real Flat" as opposed to dinkum flat.

It's hardly noticeable (Ronwen didn't at first). So is it worth pursuing? Probably not. Tomorrow's a public holiday here, and if I'm still unhappy by Saturday, I'll phone the suppliers and see what they think. Most T's & C's don't allow for refunds on opened goods, so short of real benevolence on their part I don't see that as an option. Besides, the only other monitor in this price range and spec level is a mid-level LG, and since LG and Philips have merged their CRT operations, that wouldn't do me much good either :-/

*sigh*

{2004.09.23 21:40}

Comments:

1. Stan Rogers (2004.09.24 - 00:03) #

Yep, that concavity a characteristic of "real flat" monitor design. The glass at the front has a thickness, and that thickness is the same righ the way across the screen on a "real flat" CRT. Problem is that the optical thickness is different from your eyes' perspective since you look through the centre at a more-or-less "normal" angle, while there's quite a bit of slant at the corners and edges. There's three cures for that: use a wacky manufacturing technique to graduate the refractive index of the glass radially ovr the face of the screen; build a "lens" into the screen (the way the Dynaflat screen works); and, finally, just wait till your eyes accommodate themselves to the new reality. That's what happened to me with a flat Trinitron -- after a couple of weeks of using it all day every day, I couldn't see the wow or the wire support shadow lines unless I made a conscious effort to do so. The zero-glare part makes the adjustment easy.

2. Colin (2004.09.24 - 01:14) #

Thanks, Stan. Again your encyclopaedic knowledge sets my mind at ease :)

The next time I plan to make a major electronics purchase, I'm going to save myself the grey hairs and mail you first ;)