I ordered my LCD from Newegg. One of the best purchases I've ever made. Shipped VERY fast, had no problems with it, and still works great a year later.
Your monitor had no defects, so you didn't have a problem. The problem that I have with Newegg's LCD return policy is that they require that the LCD have at least 8 dead pixels in order for them to consider it defective. That's way too many, IMO, which is why I'd rather purchase a panel from a store, where you could return it for exchange or refund at no extra cost (except for gas and time) if it has dead pixels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TiE23
*Raises hand*
Acer AL2216W - 1680x1050 - Pretty nice monitor, no dead pixels, yay.
That's the exact model that I have. Acer seems to have pretty good QC on their cheap TN panels. Mine doesn't have any dead pixels and even the backlight bleed is minimal. It's still a TN, with all of the inherent flaws (the vertical viewing angle is terrible ), but it was all I could afford at the time. All in all it was a good purchase, IMO.
There is a new type of IPS (called E-IPS) panel coming out that's supposed to be almost as cheap to produce as TNs and if everything I'm hearing about it is true, it will make TNs obsolete because people will be able to buy an IPS for not much more, and even a detuned IPS panel would be far superior to any TN. The Dell 2209WA is the first of these E-IPS panels to be introduced. I don't know about anyone else, but "IPS for the masses" sounds pretty damn good to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogue Nine
i hope you have dead pixels kojo
I smell panel envy.
Anywho, @kojo: when you get your new panel, you can calibrate it here. AFAIK, this the best LCD calibration site on the web, and I recommend that everybody use it. It worked wonders for my Acer once I made up my mind to dump the factory presets, set my video drivers to default and use only the monitor's controls to adjust for brightness, contrast and gamma. You should get the best results that way. If my cheap-assed TN panel can pass all of the tests with the drivers set at default, then anyone's can.
Just remember to turn that backlight way down because just about every LCD ships with the brightness set high enough to give you a suntan, which can be very, very bad for your eyes. It should be just high enough to pass the black level and color band tests and no higher. For reference, my brightness is set at 30 (out of 100) for webpage viewing/document reading and I turn it up to 40 for video and games. My contrast stays set at 20.
"Mind your wants, 'cause someone wants your mind."
Location: no one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low
Posts: 6,917
Quote:
Originally Posted by Qliveur
Anywho, @kojo: when you get your new panel, you can calibrate it here. AFAIK, this the best LCD calibration site on the web, and I recommend that everybody use it. It worked wonders for my Acer once I made up my mind to dump the factory presets, set my video drivers to default and use only the monitor's controls to adjust for brightness, contrast and gamma. You should get the best results that way. If my cheap-assed TN panel can pass all of the tests with the drivers set at default, then anyone's can.
Just remember to turn that backlight way down because just about every LCD ships with the brightness set high enough to give you a suntan, which can be very, very bad for your eyes. It should be just high enough to pass the black level and color band tests and no higher. For reference, my brightness is set at 30 (out of 100) for webpage viewing/document reading and I turn it up to 40 for video and games. My contrast stays set at 20.
Heh, thanks for that site. I had my contrast at stupidly high levels, it seems: for the white saturation test, I couldn't see anything besides the first checkerboard.
My monitor is really weird. The vertical angle of view is terrible, and for the black saturation tests and white saturation tests, some of them looked inverted. I noticed on the white test that I couldn't get the bottom row to display at all, until I hit exactly 80 contrast, then almost all of them popped up, only most of them inverted. They won't show up on 79, or 81, only 80. I'm just gonna keep it on that.
It looks pretty good now, thanks for the site.
My monitor is really weird. The vertical angle of view is terrible, and for the black saturation tests and white saturation tests, some of them looked inverted. I noticed on the white test that I couldn't get the bottom row to display at all, until I hit exactly 80 contrast, then almost all of them popped up, only most of them inverted. They won't show up on 79, or 81, only 80. I'm just gonna keep it on that.
It looks pretty good now, thanks for the site.
Yeah, Lagom kicks ass. Best calibration tests that I know of.
Have you tried adjusting your contrast to well below 50% (mine is at 20%)? That should help with the inversion problem. Also, the black- and white-level tests are brightness-dependent. The backlight should only be bright enough for the darkest square in the black-level test to be viewable, so that the white-level test isn't washed out. As long as you can barely see the darkest square in the black-level test and the lightest pattern in the white-level test, it counts as passing. And with TN panels, just about all of these tests are affected by the viewing angle (a huge PITA, I know ), so try to keep yourself in your normal viewing position when running the tests. TNs are best viewed from slightly above, so the top edge of the panel should be at eye level.
Remember to set your driver's desktop color settings to default and use only your monitor's brightness, contrast and RGB adjustments to get everything as close to perfect as you can before even touching the driver's settings. IMO you'll get the best results if you only use the driver's settings to compensate for any deficiencies that your monitor has. Mine are still set at default for normal use and I only have to use a driver color profile for watching videos with MPC. I don't use my monitor's factory presets at all.
"Mind your wants, 'cause someone wants your mind."
With that Lagom test page I got my left 22" 16:10 monitor to look great... didn't do such a great job on my crappy other 5:4 monitor... looks like utter **** now. >.>
Kindle Reading List (163,457 Locations Completed) Finished: Aquariums of Pyongyang (2535), Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader (24,074), The Lone Samurai (4753), Nothing to Envy (5349), Shogun (26,263), Eating with the Enemy (9170), Fight Club (3218), River Town (7524), Don Quixote (21,430), The Party(6492), Bravo Two Zero (7340), Rogue Warrior (7602), Mao's Great Famine (11,059), His Dark Materials Omnibus (20,766), Moon Lander (5882)
Edit: Whoops, forgot to say... that monitor's size is ****ing awesome on a whole different level. I'm in awe. O_O
Oh, and I wasn't being critical of your bragginess to your friend, I was just making a funny. :P
Kindle Reading List (163,457 Locations Completed) Finished: Aquariums of Pyongyang (2535), Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader (24,074), The Lone Samurai (4753), Nothing to Envy (5349), Shogun (26,263), Eating with the Enemy (9170), Fight Club (3218), River Town (7524), Don Quixote (21,430), The Party(6492), Bravo Two Zero (7340), Rogue Warrior (7602), Mao's Great Famine (11,059), His Dark Materials Omnibus (20,766), Moon Lander (5882)
Everyone tries to push their clean-up-this-aspect-of-your-computer on me. Also, the little "Look how many windows I have open!" message wasn't actually intended to be on the screencap, I just happened to be bragging to someone else, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrWally
Looks sweet.
Btw, I love how you have the $2000+ computer and you play Age of Empires 2 on it =]
Haha, oh I didn't spend quite THAT much on it. $1400, tops. Unless you include the new monitor, then yeah. :| But Age of Empires II still kicks some serious Chinese, Japanese, Goth, Briton, Byzantine, Saracen, Persian, Frank, Turk, Teuton, and Celt ass.
Moar 2560x1600 awesomeness, FEAR 2 style. The game actually runs well at full settings at that resolution. It is amazing.
Show spoiler
[Warning: Some naughty language.]
Look at that screenspace! 2560x1600 + 1600x1200. You might also notice that Both Kusanavi and Rogue Nine are fairly upset with me in Skype for some reason.
Moar 2560x1600 awesomeness, FEAR 2 style. The game actually runs well at full settings at that resolution. It is amazing.
Show spoiler
[Warning: Some naughty language.]
Look at that screenspace! 2560x1600 + 1600x1200. You might also notice that Both Kusanavi and Rogue Nine are fairly upset with me in Skype for some reason.
F.E.A.R. 2 looks very nice on your monitor. I just played that recently.
That other screen is a disaster. Tooooooooooooooo much going on at once. I would go insane if I had that many chat windows going at once. And also, people still talk in mIRC?! Why?
The FEAR 2 image was, unfortunately, sized down for Photobucket. But the other window is actually very smooth to use with all of your buddy lists on one side of you browser, and the chat windows specifically arranged around the left side. Every gadget and IRC window is on my secondary monitor (Which used to be my primary monitor).
And no, no one still talks in IRC, but we still hang there.
Moar 2560x1600 awesomeness, FEAR 2 style. The game actually runs well at full settings at that resolution. It is amazing.
Show spoiler
[Warning: Some naughty language.]
Look at that screenspace! 2560x1600 + 1600x1200. You might also notice that Both Kusanavi and Rogue Nine are fairly upset with me in Skype for some reason.
Moar 2560x1600 awesomeness, FEAR 2 style. The game actually runs well at full settings at that resolution. It is amazing.
Show spoiler
[Warning: Some naughty language.]
Look at that screenspace! 2560x1600 + 1600x1200. You might also notice that Both Kusanavi and Rogue Nine are fairly upset with me in Skype for some reason.
Good God! Your desktop is ****ing HUGE!
"Mind your wants, 'cause someone wants your mind."
As long as I can upgrade/hack my programs to do multiple IMing, I'm fine with them as they are. Third-party apps are nice, but fail horribly when you want to take advantage of special features like webcam or picture sharing.
), but it was all I could afford at the time. All in all it was a good purchase, IMO. 
Linear Mode
