Well, it looks like my fancy new Dell 24″ flat panel, the 2405FPW,
has a problem with the component input. The picture looks great for
between fifteen
minutes and a half-hour, after which some really nasty horizontal
banding shows
up. The banding sticks around until the monitor is turned off for
at least an hour. I think it might be heat related, but I’m
quoting Modern Jackass on that. It appears others have run into this same problem
and received a new monitor for the trouble. I’m getting in touch with
Dell support now to try and get a replacement… I’ll let you know how
it goes.
So far, their support gets a D. All of the support channels want a
Service Tag, which monitors do not come with. The online chat, which is
their preferred method of support, requires a Service Tag, which I just
don’t have.
The phone support doesn’t seem to think it’s possible to buy just a
monitor without a Dell desktop, so I’m currently in a holding pattern
waiting for a Dimension (a desktop) support. We’ll see how this goes
when I finally get through. So far, I’ve spent ten minutes in the
holding pattern.
Update! As heard in the little blurbs Dell plays while you are on hold:
Spyware and viruses are third party software products that are not installed or supporting by Dell.
I’d never really thought of virii and spyware as software products, though I am glad that Dell doesn’t support them. Heh.
Update 2! Well, that was easy, if slow. I ended up being on the phone for 1h 34m, and had to be transferred after finding out that the Dimension support department wasn’t the right place for me (big surprise). I was transferred to a very nice woman @ 800-822-8965, which seems to be premier support or something who quickly ran through my problem and decided to ship me a replacement monitor. It should show up fairly soon and will return a return shipping label so I can send back my current monitor for free! Once I got through, the whole experience was quite good and the folks involved were very nice and polite. The 1h 10m wait to talk to someone was painful, but with a speakerphone, I could do other things. Grade so far: B.