New Monitor

Jimmy Campbell · Post by **Jimmy Campbell** » 20 Jul 2000 6:31 pm

My 15 inch monitor at my office crashed and I got a new 17 inch monitor.
Man what a difference.
It does help the old eyes with the bigger monitor.
Jimmy

Rich Paton · Post by **Rich Paton** » 21 Jul 2000 12:45 am

What screen resolution are you using?
600 X 800?
This 1994 "15 Inch" (actually about 13 1/2 inch) Phillips Magnavox monitor has a great picture, and won't die. Otherwise, I'd like a bigger one, for the reasons you cited!
The local Costco outlet here had Sylvania 17
inch monitors selling for $199 about a year ago. The picture quality was outstanding.

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 21 Jul 2000 7:54 am

Rich - Best Buy often has 17" monitors on sale in the $150 range. Usually it is not a brand you are familiar with, but they are excellent none the less. I have put several of them in client sites and they work as well as any except Sony or someone else using a Trinitron (Sony) tube.

For my money, unless you are getting a Sony or other high end graphics monitor, get the least expensive monitor you can find from a store where you can actually bring it back if it does not work for you (read not Fry's)

jdg

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MSA D-10
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 21 Jul 2000 8:22 am

Why not Fry's? I've had no trouble returning things for refunds there.

John Gretzinger · Post by **John Gretzinger** » 21 Jul 2000 8:31 am

Earnest, you have been very lucky. Although I still, despite my better judgement, purchase stuff at Fry's, they have one heck of a reputation for being "difficult" to return stuff to, and to get assistance when things don't work quite as they should. Additionally, the people behind the return counter get (or at least used to get)a bonus based on how many people they could get to take a store credit rather than cash back.

If you know exactly what you want, and are willing to accept the low level of customer service they provide, then Fry's is OK. Otherwise, my first choice of a consumer electronics store is Best Buy. If I am buying for myself or my clients, I go to R-Tech in Canoga Park. They have been around for a while (I've been dealing with Roger since 1989) and always stand behind everything they sell.

Just my opinion.

jdg

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MSA D-10
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Jul 2000 11:12 am

I bought a 17" NEC MultiSync FE700 about 6 months ago. It is a .25 resolution display. It's much better than the CTX's and most of the no-names I've seen. Actually better than most commercial grade IBM's I've run across.

Circuit City was selling them for $249 not too long ago.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 21 Jul 2000 4:30 pm

Where I work, when my lease ran out (they lease everything in large corperations...the same computer you could buy for $3600, they lease for 3 years for "only" $15,000) they replaced my IBM G70 with a G74. Though it was supposed to be better, it wasn't nearly as good. Monitors are tempermental devices, and even the same models sometimes differ drastically in performance. At home, I use digital-programable CTX monitors. They have the best guarantee, and they have buttons for all functions! (No stupid "on screen menus"...boy, I hate them!)

Rich Paton · Post by **Rich Paton** » 22 Jul 2000 5:50 am

John, I'm with you on the Fry's comment. When I was working at the Rocketdyne plant there, I once (and only once) got sucked into visiting their Canoga Park store, by their come-on newspaper ads.
It seemed to me that everything there was either junk (all the motherboards I looked at had their boxes opened, and had been rummaged through, had manuals, cables, and adapters missing, etc.), or was espensive stuff I had no real need for. Plus, absolutely no one working there knew his or her butt [sic] from a floppy!
Not one of many questions I asked about products selling there could be answered with any degree of knowledge whatsoever from the sales clerks.
I bought some good (PNY)inexpensively priced
EDO Simm's at the Canoga Best Buys store, and it was a much better scenario there in all respects. Went back later for an excellent $120 Blaupunkt car stereo, and also did quite a bit of software shopping there.
I hope this oldish monitor will soldier on until the flat panel units come down to a reasonable cost.
BTW, speaking of prices, it (a "15 Inch" Phillips Magnavox analog monitor) cost me about $450 back in 1994! But then again, the 75 MHz Pentium chip in that old system was just under $700. The whole shebang cost about
$ 2500, with a 4x CD Rom drive, a 3.5" floppy drive, 14.4 Robotics modem, and humungous 525 MByte Seagate hard disk drive...all bundled with Windoze 3.11 and DOS 6.22, such a deal! And talk about that 75 MHz PENTIUM (wow!) BLAZING fast performance (compared to the
i386/40 MHz rig it replaced). LOL!
I guess we can't complain too much about today's prices, but you still couldn't get me buy so much as a box of pencils at Fry's.

Bill Llewellyn · Post by **Bill Llewellyn** » 22 Jul 2000 8:27 am

I've got Apple's MultiSync 15" in front of me, vintage 1994. I had to return two of them before I got one which looked ok. If I do anymore upgrading on this aging PowerPC 6100 (6115), it'll probably be the monitor (done virtually everything else I could already - processor upgrade, 136M RAM, 9G HD, clock chip).

As for Fry's, I just bought a BestData 56k modem from them. The photo on the box and the modem match up, but the model number on the box is for a better modem than the model number on the modem itself. Took it back, they opened up two mode boxes and found the same scenario. All boxes involved appeard factory sealed, even the wrap on the modem inside. BestData's problem? I emailed them twice and got no answer. Basically, if the retailing system doesn't work right the first time, trying to fix it can turn into a real grind. The difference is $20-30, and I'm not sure it's worth my time and aggravation.

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Bill (steel player impersonator) * MSA Classic U12 * email * my online music[This message was edited by Bill Llewellyn on 22 July 2000 at 09:29 AM.]

Rich Paton · Post by **Rich Paton** » 29 Jul 2000 2:26 am

Bill...don't feel like the Lone Ranger! I took a friend's brand new Best Data modem, which would not set, up to their headquarters in Chatsworth, Ca.
They replaced it with a new unit. Sounds like a happy ending, except that I went through the same process three more times, and never did get one to work.
Then I picked a US Robotics Sportster (not win)modem, stuck it in the PC, installed the driver, and was on the internet in less than five minutes.
Go figure!