[Tfug] A cautionary tale

[Bowie J. Poag]

Option "IgnoreEDID".

:)

John Gruenenfelder wrote:

>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.
>
>
>  
>