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Hardware Wars
Jul. 24th, 2017 10:34 pmSo it was like this:
During yesterday's round of "Get 'Er Done!", I wandered into the studio and discovered that the main monitor was severely static-ridden. Several rounds of reboots, cable tightening, and card reseating later, I decided that the monitor was probably shot and needed to be replaced. The question then became: With what?
Well, there are some lovely 27 inch UHD monitors out there now for not too much money. But the video card in the studio computer is old enough that it doesn't support UHD resolutions. Of course, I could replace the video card too. And I realized that this was not only turning into a project, but into a relatively expensive project. Better to buy a cheaper, decent monitor as a stop gap.
I had pulled up the Micro Center webpage and saw a Dell monitor there on substantial sale. Heck! That was the 16 x 10 monitor that I had been wanting to replace the monitors in my office with. And that sale price was much lower than I had ever seen for this particular monitor. If I bought two matching monitors for the office, I could swap the old 4 x 3 monitor out as a spare, send the widescreen monitor down to the studio for the rest of its life, and declare victory for not too much money.
I discussed this quickly with Gretchen who allowed that I could go ahead and do this. I then dove into the car and started driving, because it was 5:20 PM, Micro Center closes at 6 PM on Sunday, and it is a good half-hour drive to get there -- more if traffic is uncooperative.
Traffic was only moderately uncooperative -- I made it to the store just before 5:55 PM. I had already reserved the monitors on line, so I just had to pick them up at the front desk, pay for them, and head out. I made it back home by 6:30 PM, which allowed us to bundle the girls into the van and head over to the softball league season-ending pool party.
When we got home, Gretchen started making dinner and I started setting up monitors. And once I had the two monitors set up, I looked at them and realized that this was not a matched pair of monitors. One of the monitors had a distinct yellow tinge that I couldn't eliminate with any amount of calibration. Looking at things on line, I discovered that this is endemic with these monitors.
So I packed up the offending monitor. This morning, I drove back to Micro Center, returned the yellow-tinged monitor, got a replacement, and brought it home and hooked it up.
It had a very light yellow tinge. After reading a lot of webpages and a lot of tweaking, the yellow has now been tamed and the monitors are a reasonable match.
Meanwhile, down in the studio, my old office monitor is plugged in and operating nicely with no static. Thus, it appears that the problem was that the studio monitor was getting ready to completely give up the ghost, so I actually replaced the right part.
Overall, this was more of an adventure than it should have been. :)
During yesterday's round of "Get 'Er Done!", I wandered into the studio and discovered that the main monitor was severely static-ridden. Several rounds of reboots, cable tightening, and card reseating later, I decided that the monitor was probably shot and needed to be replaced. The question then became: With what?
Well, there are some lovely 27 inch UHD monitors out there now for not too much money. But the video card in the studio computer is old enough that it doesn't support UHD resolutions. Of course, I could replace the video card too. And I realized that this was not only turning into a project, but into a relatively expensive project. Better to buy a cheaper, decent monitor as a stop gap.
I had pulled up the Micro Center webpage and saw a Dell monitor there on substantial sale. Heck! That was the 16 x 10 monitor that I had been wanting to replace the monitors in my office with. And that sale price was much lower than I had ever seen for this particular monitor. If I bought two matching monitors for the office, I could swap the old 4 x 3 monitor out as a spare, send the widescreen monitor down to the studio for the rest of its life, and declare victory for not too much money.
I discussed this quickly with Gretchen who allowed that I could go ahead and do this. I then dove into the car and started driving, because it was 5:20 PM, Micro Center closes at 6 PM on Sunday, and it is a good half-hour drive to get there -- more if traffic is uncooperative.
Traffic was only moderately uncooperative -- I made it to the store just before 5:55 PM. I had already reserved the monitors on line, so I just had to pick them up at the front desk, pay for them, and head out. I made it back home by 6:30 PM, which allowed us to bundle the girls into the van and head over to the softball league season-ending pool party.
When we got home, Gretchen started making dinner and I started setting up monitors. And once I had the two monitors set up, I looked at them and realized that this was not a matched pair of monitors. One of the monitors had a distinct yellow tinge that I couldn't eliminate with any amount of calibration. Looking at things on line, I discovered that this is endemic with these monitors.
So I packed up the offending monitor. This morning, I drove back to Micro Center, returned the yellow-tinged monitor, got a replacement, and brought it home and hooked it up.
It had a very light yellow tinge. After reading a lot of webpages and a lot of tweaking, the yellow has now been tamed and the monitors are a reasonable match.
Meanwhile, down in the studio, my old office monitor is plugged in and operating nicely with no static. Thus, it appears that the problem was that the studio monitor was getting ready to completely give up the ghost, so I actually replaced the right part.
Overall, this was more of an adventure than it should have been. :)