August 16th, 2008

My Hanns G Experience

UPDATE: I eventually got my monitor replaced, but it wasn’t easy. Read more here.

So, a while back I was looking purchase a widescreen 19″ LCD monitor to use as a second display for my laptop. Having a second display really helps me be more productive. The reason why I decided on a 19″ and not something bigger was simple… 19″ was the biggest widescreen LCD I could get in my price range. In the end it came down to the Hanns G 19″ model and the BenQ 19″ model. I bought the Hanns G cause it would save me a long journey to the BenQ suppliers.

Anyway fast forward a few weeks after my purchase and my once nice LCD starts to show green pixels everywhere and really starts to mess up. I made sure it wasnt my graphics card or computer by testing it on other machines and sure enough it did the same thing on those other machines.

So I sent it in for repairs and about 3 weeks later I get it back (after working with a huge 19″ CRT the Hanns G supplier lent me). The excitement of having my LCD back wore after 15 minutes when the monitor did the exact same thing I sent it in for. Green pixels everywhere.

The next day I send it in again and collect that same old 19″ CRT hoping that they will actually fix my monitor this time around. I have this strange feeling the Hanns G guys didn’t even do anything to the monitor the first time it was sent in. This is because sometimes the monitor would only start messing up and showing green pixels after about 4-5 hours of use. So they might have turned it on and nothing happened for an hour and so then sent it back to me figuring nothing was wrong. This is just a theory though.

The second time it was in for repairs took even longer to get back than the first time and after about 4 weeks they replaced the faulty monitor with a “new” one. So I get my “new” monitor back and it is packaged in the same box that my old monitor was in. Seemed a bit strange to me (if they were going to give me a new monitor, why not give me a new box?). Another thing that annoyed me was that I had to constantly get in contact with the supplier to find out what was happening. Never once did they phone me.

At this point though, I was just happy to have a decent monitor again. Working on that CRT was horrible but unfortunately the story doesn’t end here…

The “new” monitor that I got back from them had a dead pixel in the middle of the screen. I actually think they sent me an old monitor that someone had returned in the hope that I wouldn’t care about or notice the dead pixel. The dead pixel is difficult to spot on a colorful background cause its red. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t installing Ubuntu Server which has a black background. But even though I may not notice it everyday, I didn’t pay for a monitor with a dead pixel.

So, on Monday I am sending the monitor back and hoping that they will simply replace it with a new one off the shelf. I cant stand another 4 weeks without a LCD.

One thing that has to be said is that it seems as if I have just been very unlucky with my Hanns G monitor. My girlfriends dad has the exact same model and has not had any problems with it what so ever. They are actually pretty decent monitors.

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