John Blade’s Homepage

I participated in the latest BulkBuyer.com.au and scored myself a sweet Dell 2405FPW 24″ Widescreen monitor.

Today I eagerly waited at home on the off-chance it would arrive, and it did! Jumping around like a young school boy after drinking too much Kandy softdrink I unwrapped the 24″ monster. Yummy, this is one slick puppy. Not quite as cool as the Apple Cinema 23″, but at almost half the price I think I can live with its uglyness.

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After unwrapping and plugging in everything I powered it up and was pleasntly surprised that my Powerbook 15″ automagically detected the monitor and the correct resolution settings. It’s the perfect height to fit my Powerbook underneath it to have both my Powerbook and the Dell on at the same time. I thought with a screen this big I’d definately have a chance of picking up the ladies.

My girlfriend was unaware of my purchase and so when I asked (demanded) she come and see my new monitor she responded with a quick “OH…. It’s… awful.”. It’s ok, not everyone can appreciate inner-beauty.

There are so many cool things I can do with this new monitor, like picture-in-picture (takes composite video) and ultimately (the main reason I got it) - gazlillions of windows to code in without having to flip about like a madman all the time!
Of course practically I had to test it’s 90″ swing action with the most appropriate test I could think of: Galaga!
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Unfortunately not all is well, after playing around with the screen for 30 mins or so I found a small defect in the bottom left hand side of the screen.
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It’s small but defiantely noticable. Not sure what could have caused it, after my careful examination from the side angles I deduced it’s not a scratch (at least that I can see) so I assume it just must be a fault in the monitor. My girlfriend has told me not to worry about it since it is quite small, but then again she gasped in horror when she saw the damn thing anyhow so her opinion is void.
No worries, with Dell’s 15 day LCD return policy I should be able to have this replaced and be on my merry way… although I think I’ll wait till next week to call them and have a weekend alone with this baby in the mean time.

Note also that the photo’s I took of the LCD were imported in the handy dandy multi-card reader on the side on the monitor! Joy!