Isolationism

I’ve purchased four 19″ TFT monitors from Samsung over the past three-or-so years (two for parents, and two for in-house use), and have recommended them to others without reservation. The honeymoon with their LCD display product line just ended after returning a recently purchased SyncMaster 931c to Best Buy because it had two dead pixels—only to return with another monitor (also factory-sealed like the others) which displayed … Another dead pixel. Fuck.

I know LCDs were plagued with problems in their early days, but come on. You’ve had over a decade to get your act together.

My conclusion: After having had three of these in my house so far, and only one that didn’t ship with any factory defects, unless you want to take a 66% chance of having one or more dead pixels on your new monitor, don’t buy the Samsung SyncMaster 931c. If you have had spectacularly good luck with a line of monitors in the past, please post a comment and let me know. I don’t think I’ll be buying Samsung again.

P.S.: Yes, I have tried the two common “folk wisdom” tricks for fixing the defect, but to no avail. I suspect these hacks may help fix some users’ aging monitors, but they can’t help rectify production defects.