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Samsung Announces Zero Dead Pixel Policy
Kez writes "A result for the consumer as Samsung declares any TFT that they sell from today onwards should be guaranteed dead pixel free. Until now, purchasing a TFT has been a gamble, given that dead pixels, while extremely annoying, did not necessarily entitle the consumer to a replacement monitor. Unfortunately, anybody who bought a Samsung TFT before today is not covered by the new policy." Update: 01/01 19:49 GMT by M : The new policy only applies in S. Korea. Suck.
"Waiter, there's a dead pixel in my soup!"
"Terribly sorry sir."
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I think you commented on the wrong story...
Why aren't the 1600x1200 flat panel LCD monitors more popular? Why do people put up with the crappy 1280x1024 resolution with a 20" monitor? Laptops have better resolution than most desktops these days. Very strange.
Logical step are ...
...
1) they raise the price of samsung monitor
2) they wait inspection before applying Samsung sticker to monitor and send those that fail to other brand
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
Lots of people notice them, and when they complain, they are told that 1 or 2 is an acceptable number due to the manufacturing process.
Hopefully Samsung's actions will set a standard for other's to follow.
Dead Pixels Policy: Replacement or Refund for 8 or more DEAD PIXELS ONLY!
Now I admit, maybe they haven't gotten "the memo" yet.
According to the article (which is really just a message board post), it's any that are purchased from today on, and it extends to six months after purchase. This is a major step forward for consumers, as it will save a lot of money for those of us who can't deal with the blemish of a couple dead pixels.
That's from Newegg.com themselves, if you want Samsung's replacement policy, you don't contact the merchant, you would call Samsung.
I can't seem to find a samsung source that says this? But it is very very nice, and about time, I think! Nowhere else do you buy products that are slightly defect (and still very expensive!)...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
i never had a 15"+ lcd without a single dead pixel.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
depends on type of "dead". those that have a colour permanently on will be very obvious e.g. constant red pixel.
I saw a LCD TV a while ago in a PC shop. I was amazed by the obviousness of dead pixels it had. not a huge number, but immediately distracting since it was showing a TV programme with constantly changing pictures instead of a static desktop. not the best way to attract customers.
Why anyone would ever actually believe that you couldn't return an LCD (or laptop) with a dead pixel. This is a manufacturing defect, plain and simple. Every customer expects there will be NO dead pixels, so my guess is that proving to a court of law that a dead pixel is a de facto breach of various implied warranties (and probably express warranties that come with the unit as well) would not be difficult.
Any decent credit card will likely supply the consumer with enough tools to reject a charge for such an item, if refused. Further, if pushed, I sincerely doubt any company would believe that they could win in a case where they're trying to foist an obviously defective monitor on someone by claiming that the defect is really bad enough to be a defect. Right. Most states provide a damages multiplier for unfair business practices such as this. This means if push actually did come to shove and you had to go to small claims court, you'd get double or triple your money back.
My guess? Samsung realizes the above to be true, and is trying to play this to their advantage.
I know it makes them more expensive because it's hard to get zero defects with LCDs but I'm guessing Samsung's manufacturing process has gotten to the point where cranking out perfect displays happens far more often than it used to.
Here's a sign of the times. A Korean company is the first to announce a zero dead-pixel policy, a gesture of confidence sure to make an impression on customers and industry peers alike. Meanwhile, does anybody care to tell how many LCD monitors were even manufactured in the United States last year?
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
And their "zero dead rat" policy.
wtf, this has nothing to do with capitalism. and not even the most strongly anti-capitalist people (except the retards that every group has) would make a blanket statement like "profit motive leads to no good end".
grow up.
p.s. glad to see the capitalist propaganda has given you such a strong "consumer" identity. personally, I think of myself as a customer i.e. I only "consume" when it suits me, not just when business ring their Pavlovian bell.
Given that there's undoubtedly still going to be a few monitors produced with dead pixels, are they going to supply thier otherwise worthless screens to other vendors for sale at a discount? And then would the consumer ever see these savings?
Further - how hard will it be for them to weasel out of the "no dead pixel" policy? After all, should something happen during shipping or in the hands of the retailer, are they going to let themselves be held responsible for damage that they may or may not have had anything to do with?
Perhaps I'm being overly skeptical on the last part there, but questions are made to be asked, after all.
P.S. does anyone else think op is trying to bring that forum down...
origin of the news, have no idea how trustworthy it is: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200412 /200412300018.html
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
> most customers probably wont even notice 1 or 2 dead pixels..happy 2005
Sorry, but that's just not true. "dead" pixels do one of two things. They either stick open or stick closed. The end result is that you have a dot on the screen that either is very obviously dark when the surrounding material is light, or vice-versa.
While this isn't terribly noticible when playing movies or video games, it is quite noticible when using most traditional 2D desktop apps. A dark pixel in the middle of your otherwise mostly white word-processing session becomes obvious.
Case-in-point is the support wires in Sony Trinitron monitors. Very, very fine horizontal lines at the 1/3 and 2/3 levels on the screen are used to hold a mesh in place which gives the Trinitron series a great display. Every Trinitron style screen I've ever sold, I got asked, immediately, what the story was with the lines. Most customers balked somewhat, but all eventually agreed to live with it.
Dead pixels are, in fact, defects. I don't intend to purchase a defective product out of the box. A product should be free of manufacturing faults for the period of its warranty, or be replaced/repaired. Cosmetic damage to say a bezel, or a power cord is trivial to ignore, but a dead pixel is a flaw in the display's ability to display accurately what it's told to.
As such, I will never buy a laptop or LCD without being allowed to first verify its display is without flaw. A retailer who refuses to allow me to confirm the proper functioning of the device before purchase/departure is a retailer who loses my business. Period.
"Oh no... he found the
I have a 15" widescreen and 17" LCD and both dont' have dead pixels. Or am I just lucky?
I'm not sure they were the first, I recall a no dead pixel policy being announced by someone a while back but possibly only for a certain product line.
Although we're talking about slightly different technology here, I've got a Samsung DLP TV. Although they haven't stated it in writing as such, from what I can gather they've been extremely good to people who have experienced "dead pixels" on their DLP sets. I haven't had any problems at all with mine (find wood, knock, repeat), but I know some people who have had the "light engines" in their sets replaced by Samsung due to dead pixels. With getting fixed pixel technology off the ground, Samsung has been reasonably consumer friendly. It doesn't suprise me that they're taking the high road here as a differentiator from their competition.
Sony on the other hand has been very stingy with their LCD sets as far as dead pixels go. Apparantly they find some number of dead pixels to be acceptable. I don't know what the threshold is, but I know that LCD sets have a reputation for dead pixels and that Sony hasn't been particularly good about getting it resolved.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Dell?
Apple?
Sony?
ViewSonic?
HP?
etc.?
-Mike
This link here is to Samsungs page on dead pixel policy (last updated 2004-06-18) and has no mention of this "new" policy. It still stands that they won't replace an in warranty monitor as follows:
...I was looking at some LCDs recently.
Good 19" LCD (1280x1024): 4500NOK / 650$
Good 20" LCD (1600x1200): 8000NOK / 1150$
Now, that is including 24% VAT and whatnot so forget about comparing them to US prices. But the ratio should be about the same. You have to pay a damn lot extra to get that 1" and additional resolution. We're talking very different price points, and there's no doubt which one is "mass market" and which one is not...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
apple and dell won't take it back unless there is 5 or more dead pixels.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
As someone who purchased a Samsung 193P a month ago and found two dead pixels I have to say this is really annoying.
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
I currently own 4 15.4" Neovo brand LCD screen I bought for half of their market price. They were discounted by a regional distributor. Two of them have a hot pixel (means always ON) and the two others have a dead pixel. I chosed ones that had this defects at edges, so for most application it does'nt bother at all.
In fact I used one of the in my kitchen, after all, if a LCD screen get hit, burnt or whatever, I prefer it to be a cheap one. So after all, there is room for nitpickers, and room for smart people.
Wake me up when they start selling cheap monitors that display true voxels.
And with a zero dead voxel policy, too.
This obviously good news for anyone buying a Samsung LCD monitor. It also implies a level of maturity in their LCD manufacturing process (no way they'd announce something like this if they weren't already producing very few panels with bad pixels). I wonder if other monitor manufacturers will follow suit?
at least someone finally managed to agree that dead fixes are a real pain...
I remember that Apple has a dead pixel policy many years ago for the early powerbooks that also would not replace units with only a few dead pixels on the LCD displays. Some 133t individuals figured out how to patch the SCSI/HD driver with some code to fake some (more) bad pixels. Since it was in the HD driver, it ran even if you booted from a floppy. I think they called this the "warranty manager" or something witty like that.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Dead Pixel Policy!
Dead Pixel Policy Live at the Filmore West
Tonight only, The Swaggering Dandies, Lovely Lads and Dead Pixel Policy...for an all ages show!
I could go on, but I won't....
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
No, a black-and-white checkerboard pattern on a 1-pixel grid is best.
In Canada (and I believe throughout the British Commonwealth), we have really big Boxing Day/Week sales right after Christmas, so I'm sure there were plenty of Samsungs just bought that won't be covered. Not sure if there are similar sales in the US (where Boxing Day isn't celebrated).
will Samsung employees make it difficult to claim this policy, as in having to contact the guy's manager's manager's manager just to get started? I've heard similar stories such as Apple's customer service refusing to return Cinema Displays initially.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I am so freakin' glad about this... I was the first in my area to have an LCD monitor (a few years ago, very expensive... blah blah), and I noticed a little red dot near the middle. As much as I tried to scratch it off it would not go away!! I later found out that this was a "dead pixel" and that Yes, it was an acceptable thing. Needless to say I was raging for a few weeks about this!
Now, I don't even see it, though. But I always worry when I buy an LCD monitor for someone else... (But Mine was the only one I've ever seen in a dozen monitors.)
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
...and you see that in other areas as well, e.g. CPUs. Those who pass the most rigorous stability tests become server chips, the others may (unless scrap) be sold as desktops. Or binned in some other fashion.
I mean, for many uses an LCD with a dead pixel or five is completely acceptable. For others it is not. I very much doubt they'll throw away a screen with a single dead pixel. It has simply too much value.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
..is usually less when using a laptop, thus it benefits more from finer resolutions.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Yes -- look for dead pixels on a white background, then change the background color to black and look for pixels that are stuck on. The latter part may be easier if you try several backgrounds with different solid colors.
What the anonymous coward said about a checkerboard does not make sense to me -- how is it easier to look for dead pixels when every other pixel is off? (And same logic applies to pixels stuck on.) However, his method is good for auto-adjusting LCD color, which is another discussion.
What this tells me is that Samsung's gotten their manufacturing process refined to the point that this policy is feasible.
I've had very good luck with LCDs, myself. My 23" Apple cinema display had one stuck pixel, and my 17" powerbook and my 30" display are both perfect.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The zero dead pixel policy is currently only available in Korea.
you couldn't return an LCD (or laptop) with a dead pixel
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
25 millisecond monitor for $449? Ick!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Easy: you alternate between black-on-white and white-on-black checkerboards at a high enough frequency that your visual system sees only a solid grey color on the display. Dead pixels (or hot pixels) on even-numbered x,y coords will show up in one pattern, but not the other, and vice versa for odd-numbered dead pixels, leading to a noticeable overall darkening of dead pixels due to the high frequency alternation.
it was by nintendo on the ds line... is it possible that nintendo buys their ds screens from samsung?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The difference isn't as much as it might seem. The 20 inch display has 46% more area as the 19 inch, and a 80% higher price. The difficulty in manufacturing displays does not increase linearly with the size, so the price doesn't either.
...it appears to be very non-linear with respect to both size and pixel count. A 20" has 10% more area, 46% more pixels. Increasing the area by 46% would make it a 23" LCD, though I can't find any 4:3 23" LCDs. A widescreen LCD of that size will cost 18000NOK / 2600$.
Now, if I could get that screen for 80% more than a 19", that'd be great. But as it is most consumers see "almost the same size, almost twice the price!?" The resolution is much less obvious than the physical size of the image.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wait a sec, can't you just buy a monitor and take it back (usually before 30 days) anyway? If the shop asks just make something up!?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's getting ridiculous when you buy a screen and you're told that if you want to return it, it must have X amount of dead pixels, not just one or two.
On a side note I have a 15" Samsung 570vTFt that's 3 years old with zero dead pixels. Wonder if their policy will only cover their Samsung branded stuff and not the stuff they manufacture for other people?
This guy is way out there
Wow that's great news, I have been holding out from getting a LCD for a while (well for a couple reasons, and that solved one of them). I have been a happy Samsung customer for a while now. A couple years ago (2.5 if I'm correct) I bought their 900IFT 19" CRT. It was defiantly pricey, although it was it was discounted because it being discontinued. It's a wonderful monitor, and I don't regret paying for it what I paid. I've gone thought a two 19" CRTs before that, one died 3 times (and shipping cost probably 1/2 of the price of it, and took 2 months to get it back), other degraded in quality within not even a year. This one has a beautiful bright flat CRT screen, extremely vivid colors. In the instruction manual they even provided instructions to setup your XF86Config file (with the right mode lines). I've recommended them to a lot of friends, and I know one other friend who also go the 900IFT and has been satisfied with it. When I get next monitor, it'll probably be a Samsung LCD.
Toyota of Japan are doing wonders with its Prius
The best TVs are Asian made
The best students come from Asia
Americans...we seem to be interested in litigation as jobs are being out sourced.
The best cell phones are Asian made
The best cars are Asian made
The best cameras are Asian made
Pretty soon, the best airplanes will be Asian made. Who would believe that the new Boeing 737s have engines with a substantial Russian technological input?
America cannot reliably go into space! What a mess! The Russians can...with almost 100% probability after almost 2000 perfectly launched flights with the Soyuz.
Surely, we as Americans are slowly becoming irrelevant! Very soon, the world will stop listening. Where will it stop?
I pitty those to live after we are gone.
None ... The United States make absolutely nothing in the entire computer industry entirely in the United States. Assembled from others part yes , manufactured none , even the PowerPC from IBM have some parts made oversea and in Canada.
There are only two company making LCD or ODM:
Samsungs
Phillips
the rest are sub-brand from the two above.
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
In general, when shopping for an LCD monitor, look for low power-consumption, small screen-pitch (less than or equal to 0.26), and at least a three-year warranty.
But before you buy a Samsung LCD monitor, get your hands on the repair manual (PDFs can be found if you are good at using Google). In the parts diagram, ensure that the LCD screen and the screen controller circuit-board are SHOWN separately and can therefore be PURCHASED separately.
I am stuck with a Samsung TFT 770 whose screen is perfect but the screen-controller board has failed. They are considered by Samsung to be ONE part, although the LCD screen is worth over $600 and the screen-controller is likely worth $15.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
*looks at his toshiba laptop :(
looks at his dead pixels*
Until now, purchasing a TFT has been a gamble, given that dead pixels, while extremely annoying, did not necessarily entitle the consumer to a replacement monitor
Whatever. Philips have been offering a zero dead pixel guarantee on all their DVI monitors for years. They only cost $20 - $50 more than the cheapo analogue ones and here in NZ they also come with a 3 year on site warranty.
Yes it's incorrect, but it's not far wrong. The 2.0 Ghz through 2.6 Ghz P4s for example are all the same chip. They take the chips and label them at the highest clockspeed they are stable at.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
I know that Apple LCD displays are supposedly Samsung/Philips made.
Other posts have indicated that Philips has the "zero dead policy" as well.
I wonder if this applies to the pixels in an OEM display - say LCDs sold to Apple for laptops and Cinema Displays.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Or, let me propose another way of looking at things. I am horrified at what happened over in asia, and have given the money that I can (being a relativly poor college student, a few hours of work worth). I have done what I can.
Now, do you expect me to now spend 24/7 mourning the loss of those people. Maybe a second a piece? How about I just move on, and know that I've done what I can.
Moral of the story: don't question people's motives when you have NO idea whats going on.
They don't know they're dead...
And I finally spring for one... a Samsung 910T And it's got one dead pixel. And I just got it last week.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
"Waiter, there's a dead pixel in my soup!"
"Shhh, keep it quiet, or everybody else will want one too."
Always buy the same brand and model of screen that you have an abundance of in your workplace. If your sceen turns out to be faulty then you have an instant swap-out with no questions asked (security aside).
Same goes for any hardware you might be thinking of getting, make sure it's 'in stock' with your employer first.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I'd consider that wasteful. I'd be happy to buy a monitor with say 10 dead pixels at halfprice or so.
Recently, here in India the LCD of my laptop (bought in the US) went bust. HP replaced it for about US$350 (it was out of warranty), and the replacement has a pixel that's permanently red. Initially I found that annoying but now I don't even notice it. Very possibly they knew it was defective and that's why it was relatively cheap: I believe replacing a laptop screen costs at least $1000 in the US (and this one is a very good 1400x1050 15.3" screen), and that's not counting labour, I remember being told (by CompUSA, I think) that it costs $200 just to get someone to open the laptop and look at it if it's out of warranty.
If I'm right and it was cheap for that reason, I don't see why they can't formalise the process and sell "defective" monitors cheap. There could be quite a demand.
How many dead bits per megabyte of ram do you find acceptable in your computer?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I have to disagree.
I purchased a flat 17" Samsung monitor when they first came out, at newegg.com. After receiving the monitor, I found that it had 4 dead pixels, in very conspicuous places (pretty much right at the center of the monitor).
I contacted NewEgg about this. At first, they said that they weren't going to do anything about it, and I had to take it up with Samsung. (They had said there was nothing they could do because it had been over 30 days since the purchase of the monitor, despite the fact that I had *received* the monitor that day, due to back order)
I contacted Samsung, and spoke with what sounded like an Italian mobster (no offense to any Italians, it's just what he sounded like.) He told me that Samsung's policy was not to do anything unless there were more then 7 dead pixels. After speaking to him for awhile, he told me that he could RMA me a REFURBISHED MONITOR. I kindly told him where he could stick his refurbished monitor and hung up.
I contacted NewEgg again, and told them that I had contacted the manufacturer and they weren't going to do anything about it. I told them that I had just received the monitor that day, and that it had dead pixels and this was utterly unacceptable. NewEgg maintained that it had been more then 30 days since they had billed me, so it must be the manufacturer's problem. I assured them that if I didn't have a return authorization code by the time I hung up the phone, I was going to contact my credit card company and issue a stop-payment on the entire order (about $2500 total), and I was going to ship the entire order back, with or without return authorization. They then decided that they could check the shipping information, and *lo-and-behold,* the monitor had only shipped four days before, and had arrived that day. I shipped back the monitor, and vowed never to purchase from Samsung again.
I purchased a Sony Multiscan E400, which I still use. Much better monitor, and a *way* better dead pixel policy (at the time it was 0 dead pixels, which would be replaced overnight with a new monitor).
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Well I will say this - I have yet to encounter an Apple flatscreen that is classified as 'defective' due to pixel anomolies - that's a statement for their current quality, not for their standards. Very rarely do I see a flatscreen with even a single subpixel anomaly. On the rare times I have seen an LCD with an issue it's a matrix problem that produces vertical (or hoizontal) bands and is clearly a defect.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Dead bits in RAM is an actual performance and stability issue. Dead pixels are cosmetic, and barely so. (Unless there is like 5 or more, then its unacceptable)
Uhh.. thanks. I'd never noticed those lines until now. Crap.
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
The only part of the picture it screws with is the pixel directly where the dead one is. 1 dead pixel out of 1.3 million doesn't make the tiniest difference with graphics.
There's actually a third type of dead pixel -- two pixels stuck together. I had a screen where adjacent red and a green pixels were always at the same brightness level. It wasn't too distracting because it wasn't visible in a black or white field, but certain colors would make it stick out.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I would naturally be willing to pay some kind of price premium if my options were ordering a display risking a really annoying set of dead pixels or inspecting the screen beforehand onsite/being promised a generous return policy.
BTW, doesn't this Korea only policy mean that we could risk being "flooded" with "bad" Samsung displays in other territories now? (In Korea, only old people have dead pixels.)
And how does this differ from a simple 'mid-grey' display, which will also show up any dead or hot pixels instantly?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Anyhow; I can already answer the first question.
In a checkerboard display the screen looks approximately grey but a single dead pixel that should be white becomes a cluster of 5 black pixels, much more obvious than a single black pixel on a grey or white background.
Ditto a single hot pixel, it becomes part of a cluster of 5 lit pixels.
Invert the checkerboard to find the other dead pixels (hot pixels that ended up being on a lit pixel, and dead pixels that ended up unlit)
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
...my iBook had a dead pixel, and I took it straight back, basically saying what you said above. However, I also pointed out that at no point when I was buying the product did the store (it wasn't an Apple store, but it was an authorised dealer / servicer) tell me that I might get one, and if I did I couldn't return it.
Now, I already have a perfectly good monitor for which I do graphics work, and this dead pixel doesn't bother me in the slightest - it's only perhaps once a month I'll even notice it. Because of this, I was reluctant to take the issue outside the shop, and so did a deal whereby they gave me 1/5th the value of the laptop in cash, based on the fact that if I'd had 5 dead pixels Apple would have replaced it...£200 in my pocket, so I wasn't really complaining.
I think there's a legal loophole that may allow ANY monitor with dead pixels to be returned, under a 'false advertising claim.' For instance, say the monitor says it can display, "1024x768" pixels, this is equivalent to 786,432 pixels. But if you have 2 dead pixels, then your monitor only displays 186,430 pixels. Well, the manufacture told you it can display 2 more pixels than yours actually does- and this is false advertising. It should make no difference if they say, "Our policy is that you must have 3 or more dead pixels to be able to return this product." This is only my guess though, any legally inclined people know if this would fly?
I just lied when I called in for my RMA, and said that there were doezens of dead pixels. I knew they wouldn't check. :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I have a "sort-of-dead pixel" on my G3 iMac. It can display green and blue, but red is dead. Nearly impossible to see, if there is nothing red in the exact position - otherwise it's a tiny black dot.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It's probably too late to get any mod points on this but for any of those late viewers who happen to see this...
This is something I completely did not expect. I often buy the latest and greatest thing to get an idea for trends and which ones would stick and new ideas for development. A lot of them turn out as busts but the ones that work really pay off. One of my more recent acqusitions was a 1920x1200 monitor.
It is a Samsung one that can flip into a vertical display mode.
Well, my intent was to only use it in horizontal mode. In fact, I originally bought the Mac 1920x1200 widescreen but returned it due to connector compatibility problems which they didn't document.
Anyways, I flipped the Samsung for fun and let me tell you, there is no going back. When writing software, the more vertical space you have, the more lines of code you can see at once. This improved productivity a great deal. I now always leave my monitor in vertical mode and I absolutely love it.
The funny thing though is I never thought I'd be using my monitor like this. It seemed like a gimmick or at best, useful for designers. And I am actually a graphic designer too (I used to even have a design company) and seeing a full page drastically changes the way you design as well. Anyways, if you are a programmer with cash to spare, this is a great way to improve productivity.
Ironically, the other great find on producitivity was a rectangular bookshelf (one level but wide with edges and a top) that I mounted over my computer desk. It puts all the books I need access to really close by. I found that having reference books within arms reach, easy to find greatly increased my use of the reference books and also improved productivity. I originally bought this bookshelf just to clean up my area but it turned out to have a great productivity boost.
Sunny
Be my Friend
Windows does have a "DPI" and I thought it acted like it was hard-coded to 96. The only effect I know of is that you can ask for a font in "points" and in "pixels" (specified by setting the point size negative) and you always get the same font by asking for 3/4 the number of points as when you ask for pixels. At one time (Windows 3.x or so) this ratio did vary depending on the screen, but they fixed it because far too much software assummed they would get a particular size when asking for a font.
// fontsize is positive for points, negative for pixels
There is in addition this call which I think does return a real DPI, but the value here does not affect the size of fonts:
monitor.dpi_x_ = GetDeviceCaps(GetDC(0), LOGPIXELSX);
monitor.dpi_y_ = GetDeviceCaps(GetDC(0), LOGPIXELSY);
The "preferences" (from the monitor control panel appearance tab?) to change the font size just makes the following call and some similar ones return a different values, since these values are then expected to be used to pick fonts I don't think it can or should change how points are converted to font sizes:
NONCLIENTMETRICSA ncm;
int sncm = sizeof(ncm);
ncm.cbSize = sncm;
SystemParametersInfoA(SPI_GETNONCLIENTMETRICS, sncm, &ncm, SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
const char* fontname = ncm.lfMessageFont.lfFaceName;
int fontsize = ncm.lfMessageFont.lfHeight;
Then again I could be mistaken, like you I do not have a Windows machine to check this out on.
In S. Korea, dead pixels are for old people.
One thing I noticed a year or two ago when I was in the market for an LCD, was that 19" was not very much more expensive than 17", as long as they were the same resolution. Buying a higher resolution, even at the same size screen, increased the price a lot.
This seems to be the opposite of CRTs, where you pay mainly for size rather than resolution. Which makes sense I guess... I assume that with CRTs, the size of the tube is the main factor in price. With LCDs on the other hand, each pixel is a group of transistors so (I assume) the count matters more than the size.
Some of Sony's LCD panels have a ZDP warranty, for example the SDMX73
"How many dead bits per megabyte of ram do you find acceptable in your computer?"
Insightful? Oookay.
Well there's two ways to look at this:
Dead bits of RAM that lead to system instability. Uh... how is this even REMOTELY like an LCD with dead pixels?
"Derp de derp."
"Well there's two ways to look at this:"
Err. Ignore that statement. My original post was longer and I killed all but this line of it. Sorry that I didn't preview first.
"Derp de derp."
I bought a Mitsubishi Diamond View DV172 a while back, and it was fine when I tested it in store, I got it home, and it worked fine, within a week, it had 4 coloured pixels stuck on (within what they deemed acceptable), so I called Mitsubishi explained what had happened, and within 2 days, they sent me a replacement. Very good service there, I was wondering if other companies do the same... ie dead pixels within a week of purchase, if they replace them?
Is it too much to ask that article submissions be edited for grammar? The first sentence is a meaningless fragment and the second is a run-on. I know grammar is boring but maintaining a high readability for your articles can only pay off.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Is the pixel count defined by the screen resolution? What if you changed the resolution down, would you still have a complaint? If you buy a banana, and pay per pound, only to discover that only the inside is edible, will you also have a problem with that too?
Reserving the no-dead-pixel policy to Korea only has got to be one of the stupidest PR moves I've seen in a LONG time. In the old days a manufacturer might have gotten away with a ploy like this. But now with sites like /. where prime customers congregate from all over the world, there's no way in hell a manufacturer can treat similar buyers differently. Especially, when you're selling into a market with lots of suppliers. Dumb, just plain dumb.
I'll buy some other brand before I'll agree to be treated as a second class customer.
So Samsung Marketing, tell you how to escape being branded as a no account bumbling bunch of fools who cost the company millions in sales - blame the press. Just issue a press release saying that the no dead pixel policy is worldwide and that any reports to the contrary were in error. Nobody will think twice about it. On the other hand, leave the policy as Korean only and watch what happens to your sales when you push people to the back of the bus.
Or am I just really lucky?
I've had this ViewSonic VG150 LCD display for 3-4 years I think, and there's still no dead pixels I can see. Whenever I think I see a dead pixel, turns out it's just a speck of dirt on the screen.
And my LCD monitor at work looks fine to me too. Actually, I don't think I've ever noticed a dead pixel before on any LCD monitor I've seen.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
If I bought a new Mercedes, i would have an expectation that the seats would not have holes in them, or that the fuel line not leak. That is a reasonable expectation. If there were a reason to believe otherwise, it is the responsibility of the vendor to disclose such information.
Likewise, when I bought my last laptop, I expected the screen to work as advertised (1024x768 pixels ALL of them working) I got screwed, and was never made aware until after the fact. Whether or not there is an ISO standard to define LCD quality is irrelevant, the LCD should work just like the one on display in the showroom.
I look forward to the class-action lawsuit that is long overdue for this issue.
3)Accept the fact that the manufacturing process is not perfect and pay extra for a zero dead pixel display.
In some industries they sell imperfect products as "Factory seconds" at discounted prices. Often they will put a different brand name on them.
eg.: most of my wardrobe.
An exception is the automobile industry. You don't have much chance of returning a defective car for refund or replacement.
This is something I fundamentally disagree with. A LCD has precisely one function: to accurately display the data being sent to it (within the stated specifications of the screen's ability to do so [ie. resolution, colour-accuracy, brightness etc.]) To have a pixel which fails to render the expected result is a flaw in the core purpose of the product. If anything deserves the term "defect", I'd think this is it.
Making an analogy with a car, where most failures in its core purpose are dangerous to life is difficult at best. Instead think of a roof on your house, which is perfect... excepting just one little leak, amounting to a tiny percentage of the square footage. Tell me as the water seeps into your drywall that your roof isn't defective.
I dispute this as well. Without there ever having been a choice to buy a "guaranteed 100% pixel version" of LCDs, there never was a choice. What really happened was that manufacturers decided that they didn't want to take a loss on manufactured items that weren't functionally flawless, and decided for us what is good enough. Mind you, I'll agree that if there was a significant dollar difference between "100% pixel" and "1-3 dead pixel" versions, most people would SEEK the cheaper version. I myself may be one of those people. But as long as there is one version, which may, or may not, be properly working, I will continue to insist that I physically end up with the better product.
"Oh no... he found the
How about "And I, for one, welcome our new undead pixel policy overlords."?
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I can easily understand wanting to get a better product for yourself. By all means, pay attention to dead pixels when buying LCDs, just as I personally would do. But please cut on the indignation. Dead pixels are defects, but an LCD with dead pixels is not defective. The product you are buying is not perfect by design. Just like plasma TVs that have plasma burnm just like fresh milk that spoils in a few days. Current technology allows us a tradeoff. You don't like it, you don't buy it. Don't like fresh milk, buy pasteurized or sterilized milk instead. A few dead pixels do not prevent most people from using their LCD display.
As for a choice, the manufacturers have no responsibility to offer it to every new customer who appears on the market. They most likely tried it in the past and found that people want a better screen, but are not willing to pay for it. Throwing away slightly inperfect screens would be too expensive and would harm customers by forcing prices up. When it becomes possible, they would solve the problem, but until then please stop blaming them.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Many manufacturers already operate a "no dead pixels" policy, BUT you need to read the small print to discover that they don't regard a pixel in which one of the three color components is faulty as "dead". Only one of the subpixels is dead.
So if you buy one of their LCDs and it has a red subpixel that has failed, leaving a permanently red-tinted pixel, that's not considered a serious enough fault for a DOA replacement.
Faults which cause a whole pixel to die are relatively rare and certainly more obvious, so that's why they replace LCDs with this problem. You're still going to pay a premium if you want to buy a batch of LCDs and return all the ones with display faults. At least for a while yet. If you (as a dealer or reseller) want to buy such zero defect screens, you need ISO class 1, instead of the consumer class 2.
If you're a consumer, buying a single LCD, and you're having sleepless nights over dead (sub)pixels, go to a real world store, and insist on either opening & testing the LCD or buying a display model so that you can see exactly what you're getting. You will undoubtedly pay more than you would buying online, but you'll be certain to avoid dead (sub)pixels this way. Display faults are practically always a manufacturing problem, not something that develops over time.
Okay, children, your assignment today is to work out how big 1 pixel is on the screen in front of you and stick a piece of blutack, sticky paper or appropriate opaque material on the screen. The effect you are aiming for is to hide 1 pixel as though it is broken. For a 15" display running 1200 x 1024, the blob will be about one hundredth of an inch square or a quarter of a millimetre square. Doesn't sound like much does it?
Okay, now you all have your pretend broken pixels, use your screen as normal and see how annoying and distracting that blob is. Try inviting a friend to look at a document or animation on your screen and see how long it takes before they wipe off the blob.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Pretty interesting ! guess you should post a snapshot of your Comp, along with the book shelf. Sounds like a good idea.
Why does yahoo do this
I recently spent half my holiday returning screens to Fry's until I got one that was defect free.
I had two always-on green subpixels on the last one, and it became to distracting for me to work with. I'd be writing some code, and then my eye would catch on the green-where-there-should-not-be-green.
Anything that breaks concentration while working is not worth owning. Maybe I could tolerate defects on a second screen on the same system, but never on the primary.
I'm confused. Are you trying to say that a dead pixel is or isn't annoying?
"Derp de derp."
A warning to anyone looking to purchase a Samsung monitor- don't. My company recently had purchased a new Samsung CRT, which was defective. After fighting with Samsung support, they finally agreed to send another one, (although forcing us to pay for shipping). Upon receipt of the new monitor, we discovered that all replacement monitors are refurbished models (lovely internal policy, Samsung). Aside from this, the new monitor had a bad phosphor screen, so blocks of pixels were dead. We went through four monitors in the same manner, having to pay shipping for each subsequent monitor. It's just lovely that Samsung replaces new monitors with refurbished ones that don't work. And they refuse to pay for shipping. If you're looking for a Samsung monitor, reconsider.
Erm... I think 1 dead pixel is annoying and that was a way of testing if you found 1 dead pixel annoying before spending a few hundred bucks on kit.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.