taking the plunge, upgrading to LCD..

[Trypt]

Ok, so I need some info on what to get. I am totally sold on the 2405 by Dell, but I have never seen it live. As far as pictures go, this thing is absolutely beautiful, and nothing else comes even close as far as price is concerned. So I was totally ready to purchase, when my friend from Amsterdam started convincing me to first stay away from widescreen alltogether, second stay away from that specific monitor as there are many KNOWN problems with it. Any truth to any of this?

Anyhow, what is the personal or professional experience here with the 24" WS Dell? Am I gonna be salivating at the mouth or fuming at the ears if I get this thing? And why would my buddy be telling me to not touch widescreen monitors? He says something about them not displaying pixels properly, and distorting pictures (so that when you view a 4:3 picture, it actually looks more like 8:5 and stretched out). This doesn't make any sense to me since a pixel is a pixel when it is displayed, but there may be something to this.

Anyhow, I am here to be talked into or out of buying the 24". Please help.

 

[Albaholic]

Do it man. as far as images being distorted you can have the monitor display it in aspect mode so nothing gets distorted. I have one and I love it. I cant wait to pick up my second one

 

[stang8118]

If you plan on hooking it up to the PC in your sig i would look at something else. No way that ti4200 will run any game at the resolution needed for a 24" widescreen.

 

[attack]

Your friend isn't up on times. Maybe back in 1993 they couldn't display anything other than a 4:3 image, but today we even onboard graphics can display 1920x1200 or 1680x1050.

The 2005 had/has (still open to debate) backlight bleeding issues...I owned a 2005 and never experianced this.

My 2405 is flawless.

Widescreen is so much better IMO....you can have 2 adobed acrobat pages or 2 word pages open side by side on the same screen....movies are a dream, and widescreen gaming is the best thing since 3d textures.

As for why not to get the 2405? If you game your gonna need a powerful card to run 1920x1200...you can always run non native res' (which I actualy have to do in a game called city of villians because my card can't push 1920x1200 with acceptable framerates for me....but I don't see any distortion).

Be sure to check into the 2005 as well, you can get that for sub 400 right now I think with some coupons that are out. (saw it on fatwallet.com)

 

[Trypt]

My new system which I am building specifically for this monitor will be:

-DFI Ultra-D mobo
-AMD 64 3700+ 1MB cache OR Opteron 144 (can't decide as of yet), will try to o/c at least 20% for everyday operation.
-2x512MB ram (pc3200 high quality, or pc4000 mid-range, can't decide as of yet)

The video card I already have: Sapphire ATI Radeon X800GTO 256Mb DDR 256-Bit VGA/Tv-Out/DVI

So, will this system be able to play new games on the 24" with 1920x1200 res? I am willing to lower quality down from the highest qualities, but I would really hate it if I couldn't play at this resolution (except on games that don't allow it, i can live with that).

The first game that I will probably spend hours on will be Civ 4, but I'll also re-play FarCry and Half-Life 2 as well as Doom3 since I played them all on a crappy 17" CRT with the system below (still looked good to me tho)..

Thanx tho guys, give me some more info on the 24".. Is it safe to buy off ebay or what?

Whats the warranty on this screen? I hope there is some serious warranty cuz I'd hate to waste a gino..

 

[attack]

I'd avoid ebaying this....get it from dell...they have a 21 day money back, no questions asked policy...so if you get one with dead pixels or backlighting issues or just don't like it cuz you can't play your games on it...they pay shipping back and will give you a new one or give ya your money back.

Dell will have coupons on these hopefully soon (I know you really want to pull the trigger but you might be better off waiting, could save ya 200+)

FEAR might give you some trouble with that card, it was getting borderline choppy (under 30fps) with my card at medium settings.

One good thing about the 2405 and dells LCD's are they allow for a 1:1/Aspect stretch/and Stretch modes...1:1 will blackout any pixels not used and center the image...i.e. if your running 800x600 you'll have a small block in the middle and all the border blacked out...it will keep the image from looking crappy since it's using a pixel for each pixel it's told to display.
aspect stretch will stretch the image as large as possible but retain the aspect ratio, and stretch will stretch any size image the full size of the monitor, distorting it if it's not 16:10

 

[Trypt]

The thing with buying from Dell, I live in Canada and am not sure if this is something that I can do. Anyone know how a Canadian might go about buying this monitor directly from Dell (which is what I would prefer to do)?

The thing about ebay is the low low low price, and the sellers all claim they have full warranty and are brand new in box.

 

[Albaholic]

I don't really see how ebay sellers can offer full warranty when you would have to go through dell to get it serviced or replaced

 

[datura3]

I don't really see how ebay sellers can offer full warranty when you would have to go through dell to get it serviced or replaced

You an transfer the warranty from dell to a new owner. It's actually really easy to do.

I would definitely recommend the 24" dell. I bought one for 850 shipped a few months ago. Just be patient and wait for a deal. Also I bought a concession coupon on ebay. It saved me another 35 dollars. That is about the same cost as on ebay. I would have bought it off ebay, but it was the same price to get it through dell. If you have to buy it through ebay, just pick a good seller with a full warranty and a return policy. There are a lot of power sellers trying to sell these. Good luck, and you will not be disapointed by this monitor!

 

[Trypt]

...

Datura, thanks for the info bud. I will not buy it off Ebay, I have decided, so I'll just wait to get a deal. Can you give me the link to where you bought it? If they ship to Canada, I will buy it there.

I contacted Dell and the rep told me it would be best to buy it in Canada, however he said I can buy it from the U.S. and get it transfered. But not from Dell, he said Dell USA doesn't ship to Canada (since they have a Canadian counterpart, which of course I cannot find and his link didn't help either).

As far as the decision, I am just worried that it is too large. I wish Dell made one in the middle between the 20.1 and the 24"! a good 22" would be perfect for my application. On the other hand, I argued for a long time with my dad about the DLP Toshiba, I said the 62" would be too big and wanted the 52", my dad insisted on the 62". Finally we got the 62" and boy are we happy. There is no way in hell I would ever trade it for a 52" even if it was half price, its that much of a diff.