Beware of LG

[Edwin Pawlowski]

It all depends on your accounting to define cost effectiveness. People
like you say "I earn $15 an hour, I'm not going to spend an hour fixing a
$10 toaster." OK, maybe you earn more than $15 an hour, but it must be
quite some time since you last checked toaster prices at Walmart's.

Last year when we needed a new toaster, you could find one at Wal Mart for
$7 and change. I don't take my earnings into consideration when it comes to
my time doing repairs. If I'm in the mood for tinkering, I'lls pend an hour
to repair a $2 widget just for the fun of it. OTOH, if I have need for the
Widget Supreme that cost $4, I'll toss the old and buy tne new.

One year ago, I had a printer that I had bought around 1990. If it hadn't
given up for some unknow reason, I'd still be using it. It printed. What
more could I ask?

If you are printing text, recipes, and shopping lists, it is a good deal.
I'd still use my HP 500C for that. But I now have the ability to pring high
quality photso from my Canon printer. Nothing made in 1990 came close.
Depends on your needs.

What you can afford today is because people who make your TV set earn 25¢
an hour. ALL our electronics industry has moved to Asia. I wonder if
there's even a single transistor made in America.

Mostly, but not the only reason. There is still some good cost effective
manufacturing left in the US.

I'm not that old, but I remember the days when you went to a television
station and cameras were made in America by GE and RCA.

RCA was one of our largest customers in the 1970's and up to about 1984 or
so when they shut down the picture tube plant in Scranton, PA.

Ours C-aesars, CIO, CFO, CTO, etc. make fortunes selling our jobs to Asia
and people who made their money in the good old days, when wages were high
and taxes low, can afford this new life style. But younger people, when
they're lucky enough to get a job, end up as policemen, firemen, wardens,
social workers, psychologists, teachers, specialized care teachers,
salesmen, service clerks, civil servants, doctors, layers, accountants,
etc., but they don't produce much that can be exported. Since housing
costs have soared, many of them have a hard time making ends meet.

You left out casinos

Do you sometimes give a thought about tomorrow?

Yes, quite often. I've worked for manufacturing companies all my life. Our
products are mostly sold to other manufacturing plants. In the past, a
piece of the "pie" could keep a company in business and profitable. Now the
pie is shrinking and many of our customers have gone overseas. The pie is
shrinking every day. Skilled workers at Electric Boat have been laid off
and now work at the casino for less than half their old wages. Casinos brag
how they have crated jobs, but none pay worth a damn.

If I was starting life over, I'd consider a medical field. People will
always get sick.

 

[Yugo]

It sounds to me like you got a bad example or a cheap display, which I find
odd since it seems like you value high quality/correct color and brightness
output.

I don't see what's odd. You can't check monitors in most stores with the
settings and pictures they provide.

I have an AOC (certifiably cheap!) flat panel display that sounds
very similar to what you got with your LG....it too has the uneven
brightness problem, along with a lack of sharpness to the picture.

The LG was sharp, though. As for the Viewsonic, I must have been lucky
Colors, I read at behardware, are horrible. I didn't touch mine. Toms'
Hardware says that this monitor is not ideal for office work. I've read
and written for 3 weeks, 10 hours a day, on mine and I can't find any
problem at all. Letters' sharpness is excellent. Many people report faint
bleedthrough at Cnet's. I checked with a black picture and I can't see any.

Maybe the contrast ratio could be higher but the Viewsonic is not put to
shame by some monitors that advertise higher contrast ratios. Most
probably a monitor in the $500-600 range would do better, but I can't
complain as only the highest highlights lack details. I'd have to see a
monitor that does better before I can comment on this.

If only Viewsonic didn't advise its customers that even their higher
priced models can be scrapped by an inadequate refresh rate like the
cheapest CRTs of long ago, I'd recommend the VX922 without hesitation.

None of the reviews I've read so far at Tom's Hardware or Behardware
mention this "little" problem. So much for extensive testing!

 

[Yugo]

If I was starting life over, I'd consider a medical field. People will
always get sick.

There was a time when doctors were pretty poor. They were paid with
whatever people could offer that was worth anything: a chicken, a pie,
flour, etc. Dying was an alternative.

Let's hope for doctors that people can still pay them with good money in
the years to come.

 

[Stuart Winsor]

If I was starting life over, I'd consider a medical field. People will
always get sick.

Undertaking (Funeral director) was always considered a career without an
end. Then of course, there will always be taxmen and revenue collectors

--
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| || \\__/\__/| \||__ | /...Internet access for all Acorn RISC machines
___________________________/ (e-mail address removed)

101 uses for a Pentium: No2 - A greenhouse heater.

 

[John McWilliams]

Undertaking (Funeral director) was always considered a career without an
end. Then of course, there will always be taxmen and revenue collectors

Well, yeah, until the FD himself dies..... Devil's advocate is long
term, but doesn't pay well.....

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Well, thanks for your detailed story about the two companies and how
they treated you, and how their products are/did hold up.

I would agree with you that it is nearly impossible to get reliable
after purchase service or tech support with many products today. It
seems to be all about sales figures, and little about service. Today a
couple of hundred dollar item doesn't seem to warrant in any customer
service in the high tech field. I suppose part of it is lowered profit
margins, but part is just a basic dismissive attitude.

Art

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Probably not anymore, unless you are speaking very top end. Years ago
printers were more costly and designed to last (even inkjet)... now they
are made to be at best recycled within a year or two, and at worst, to
be just dumped.

Art

Richard Steinfeld wrote:

 

[Arthur Entlich]

My main point was that they had developed the reputation of producing
higher grade products through reinventing themselves. They did also
somewhat improve the build of their products from the Goldstar period.

Art

I'm going to keep this (relatively) brief because, after all, we're on
a printer group.

Yes, maybe I should haveadded OT to the title . But it's still hardware
after all and, after what I went through, I didn't appreciate Arthur
Entlich's comment about "Goldstar develop[ing] into a higher quality
company"

Mag Innovisions flunked the test. NEC flunked this simple test.
Panasonic flunked

the same test.

You may add Toshiba and Canon. After many threats, Toshiba finally
provided the manual, but it really took too many threats. Flunked.

Repairable products, sadly, cost more to manufacture than the
throw-away garbage that's become so popular, products that are
sometimes reviewed: "It outperformed products selling for twice the
price."

Isn't that pretty much how America got kicked out of the electronics
market? One wonders how come manufacturers never insisted much on the
quality of construction. Most probably it would have been in vain.
Because Japanese products were built at much lower wages, maybe
America's wouldn't have standed the comparision.

 

[Yugo]

My main point was that they had developed the reputation of producing
higher grade products through reinventing themselves. They did also
somewhat improve the build of their products from the Goldstar period.

Somewhat... It must have been real bad before! Being honest would be a
good start. AFAIAC, they made a name for themselves.

 

[Yugo]

Well, thanks for your detailed story about the two companies and how
they treated you, and how their products are/did hold up.

I would agree with you that it is nearly impossible to get reliable
after purchase service or tech support with many products today. It
seems to be all about sales figures, and little about service. Today a
couple of hundred dollar item doesn't seem to warrant in any customer
service in the high tech field. I suppose part of it is lowered profit
margins, but part is just a basic dismissive attitude.

Don't forget what I said about Staples, though. They don't pressure you to
buy and if you do, they offer service. This attitude is so refreshing in
all this fooling around, I feel like I'm daydreaming. And, you know what?
I do believe that, in the end, addressing customers' problems is less
costly for Staples. Rigmarole doesn't come cheap.

Kudos!

 

[Arthur Entlich]

I was part of a set of focus groups with Staples locally. One major
emphasis of the interviews was issues of customer services, so Staples,
at least in Canada, obviously feels it is important, and in my personal
experience they have made an effort to accommodate customer needs.
There are still things that they need to improve upon, but of the "big
box" stores, they do a pretty good of it.

The problem is that some of the other competitors shave off a few more
pennies, and this attracts some additions clients. It is only after
they have to deal with the aftermath of a return or defect that they
often wish they had paid a few dollars more.

However, I have to admit that here in Canada, although we often pay a
premium for it, we get better customer service than found in other
countries, but that is probably because Canadians are pretty
conservative with money and want assurances for their purchases.

We also often have longer warranties from manufacturers than are offered
just across the border in the US.

Art

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

If only Viewsonic didn't advise its customers that even their higher
priced models can be scrapped by an inadequate refresh rate like the
cheapest CRTs of long ago, I'd recommend the VX922 without hesitation.

I don't know why they say this.

I've overdriven my Viewsonic A90f+ several times, and sometimes I walked
away. (I know, bad idea!) Each time it shut down gracefully after
complaining of "out of range" sync. It would even display the sync frequency
so you could see which one exceeded the monitor's ratings.

Part of the reason I've tested this is because the video card the monitor is
plugged into sometimes goes into a strange mode when a full screen command
prompt/console is requested. I guess the video card is somewhat defective...

William