New monitor or Gfx card?

[trevolly]

Hi all - can someone offer any advice.

I have a Sony 19" Multiscan E400 CRT monitor. Its been the best monitor I've ever had but today its started playing up. It has been occasionily "popping", which involved the screen flashing and scaring the **** out of me!! Now the screen is constantly going from its usual sharp image to gradualy going fuzzier and more out of focus, to the point you cant read it. The all of a sudden the monitor "pops" and it all returns to the usual sharp image!

Monitor or GFx card (GFX card is fairly newish PCI-E 850xt pte) All help appreciated

[Alec]

The monitor has a fault.

If I were you, I'd take the cue to get rid and buy a nice shiny LCD instead.

With prices as they are, assuming the old one is not under warranty, it will cost you more to get someone (who genuinely knows what they are doing) to fix it.

LCD prices are tumbling, there's some really good stuff on the market at very low prices, much less than you paid for that CRT when you bought it, and I know very few people who would go back to CRT after they've used TFT for a while.

TFT takes a bit of getting used to though, it's a very different experience to work in front of.

One other thing, the fault you describe sounds like a loss of HV regulation leading to arc-over inside the set, I'd stop using it right away if I were you.

Alec

[djgandy]

Excellent advice.
Repair is not an option, unless you want to throw money away.

Get a TFT, even the cheap ones are good. If you spend a little more you'll get a better reponse time and a slightly nicer looking one too :)