[Tfug] A cautionary tale

[John Gruenenfelder]

Just a little heads up for you all...

I recently decided to finally get a LCD to replace my CRT.  After a bit of
reading and examining, I settled on an LG 19" LCD panel.  Specifically, the
L1980 model.  The L1980 comes as either the U (12ms response time) or the Q
(8ms response time).

Originally, I was going to purchase the U model from Newegg until Friday when
I received a $50 cupon from BestBuy for 19" LG panels.  It would still be more
than Newegg, but not horribly so.

The big difference here is that Newegg sells only the U model whereas BestBuy
sells only the Q model.

So, I bought a L1980Q at BestBuy.  It worked great.  Then, when checking
everything out in Linux, I read through the X startup log file.  In that log,
the server prints out some of the EDID information from the attached monitor.
According to the EDID data, the model was reported as an L1980U.

I checked with the display manager software it came with in Windows and it
said the same thing.  So I looked at the model number printed on the bottom of
the base.  There, it said this was a Q, but the model number still had a U in
it.

Confused, I took it back to BestBuy to ask them about it.  Not surprisingly,
the BestBuy guy (BBG) wasn't really sure.  He did offer some plausible
explanations about how companies do wierd things with model numbers.  He
suggested that I call LG's customer service and ask them what was going on.  I
figured I wouldn't get much information out of them, so I returned it
(fortunately, no hassles with that).

On Monday, I'll buy the U model from Newegg.  It will cost less and at least I
know it really will be a U (unless they send me the more expensive model
accidentally).

The point?  Umm.. buyer beware?  I don't believe this was any nefarious doing
on BestBuy's part.  If anything, it might be LG's fault.

The only difference between the U and Q is the reponse time.  Other than that,
they are identical.  Well, except for price of course.  I tried to use the
EDID decoder that comes with lm-sensors on the panel.  I've used it in the
past, but I couldn't get it to work here.  So... I'm not sure if I could have
probed info like reponse time from EDID anyway.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Research Assistant, Steward Observatory, U of Arizona
                        johng at as.arizona.edu
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