First annual NiceMac.com YouTube Video Contest.

First annual NiceMac.com YouTube Video Contest. Win a nice box of Mac stuff!

See details at:

http://nicemac.com/index.php?topic=144.0

Sincerely,

Goodtime
NiceMac Founder
http://NiceMac.com

Message to: supportgeek@geeks.com

Hello,

I just bought a 60W Compaq / HP OEM Comp. DC Car Adapter from your company and I think I purchased the wrong one.

My laptop is a Compaq Presario X1000. The plug for this adapter that I bought is too big for my laptop.

Would it be possible for your to send me a replacment and I can ship this one back to you, net 30 days?

Order Number: AZ2817547
Customer ID: 6173509

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Goodtime

p.s.

I thought I would post this message on the internet because I have not heard from your company in 3 days. I will try calling but why do you have any email address if you don't respond to it? This is bad customer care.

Dell 2407FPW 24" HD Monitor Review (Revision A03)

I just received a 24" 2407WFP Dell Monitor (Revision A03). So, I thought I would tell you about my first week's impressions of this fine monitor.

When I first opened up the box. It was impressed the 2407WFP had the following Digital Ports:
DVD-D, VGA, Component, S-Video and Composite. This is really nice if you plan on hooking up a set top box, game system, or an external digital video camera/camcorder.

I read somewhere that this monitor is not a bright as a comparable Samsung monitor. I work on computers all day, I when I first started using this monitor, the first thing I did was turn the brightness down from 50 to 25. At 50, the colors look really nice, but it was too much eye strain on me. When watching movies, I usually turn the brightness back up to 50 and for desktop work I use it at 25.

There is one strange thing that I noticed about the monitor. At certain brightnesses when moving a window around the screen in Mac OS X, there is sometimes a green, yellow or brown halo or trail. Adjusting the brightness in combination trying the PC Normal color setting instead of the Mac setting helps make it go away. I am not sure what exactly causes this as I have not seen it my other Dell Monitor, a 2001FP on the system. Luckily the monitor can be adjusted to minimize or remove the colored ghost trails altogether.

I purchased a separate speaker bar for the 2407WFP. It works fantastic and the monitor comes with it own power for the speaker bar. I recommended anyone who buys a dell monitor especially the 2007WFP, 2407WFP, or the older 2405WFP and 2001FP models to purchase the optional $30 speaker bar.

The 24" is an HD monitor. So I thought I would download some 720p and 1080p movie trailers. The first own I tried playing was Shrek the Third. My computer stutters when trying to play 1080p movies, so I will just talk about the image quality and detail. It was outstanding. Very clear picture. Image detail was superb. Textures such as wood and pores in a characters face comes out really nice. There was also no banding between colors. I rank this monitor pretty high for its HD quality. I also tried 720p movies on my computer and these looked almost as good as the 1080p versions and the picture and frames produced very smooth playback. Playing regular DVDs worked good too. This monitor does a good just sampling up 480p to 1080p to full screen. While your are not going to get HD quality detail, DVDs do not look blurred or pixilated. iTunes movies look almost at good as a DVD. Some pixillation was noticable due to the movies being 360p widescreen as for the type of compression that Apple Inc. uses. Overall for watching HD and DVD movies, I give this screen a thumbs up. Now if you have a big room, I would recommended getting a 27" or 30" screen if you can afford it. 24" is good for watching movies in a small room or office, but it's going to be your big screen TV, but for me this is all I could afford, it is my personal HDTV. The monitor is HDCP compliant, so if you have an HDCP compatible Video card and OS, you will be able to watch HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies, provided your have an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray software player and hardware.

I did some photoshop work and with the HD quality screen at 1920 x 1050 using the Photoshop 3 beta, there is plenty of room for workspace and pallets. Websurfing is also really nice, you can have 2-3 webpages side by side. For technical writing, you can have a window for research material and another for your word processor or blogging software. The monitor is very wide, so the corners of the screen appear slightly distorted. It's not the monitor, its our eyes. I think one day if these monitors get any bigger, we are going to need to have a curved 180 degree screen, so anywhere that you look on the monitor it appears to have the same point of view. The 2407FPW, does swivel left and right and tilt it up and down. You can move the monitor just about any way want to suite your viewing needs.

Other than the ghost trails that can be fixed by adjusting the monitor, I don't have anything bad to say about this screen. One other thing it could use is a dedicated button for brightness. But the controls are not terribly hard to use. It is sometimes hard to tell which item is highlighted in the color settings area. If you don't have an HDTV but would like HD quality on your desktop or game system, this monitor is for you. For Video editing, watching movies, using Photoshop, Web Surfing, this is an all around great monitor to have sitting on your desk.

I give it 4.5 of 5 stars.

Pros: Smooth Gradients, HD Quality 1920x1050, Built in Media Card Reader, USB 2.0 4-port hub, nice sunken buttons on the monitor. Comes with ICM profile on CD.
Cons: Ghost trails are possible, missing dedicated physical buttons for lowering and raising the brightness, sometimes it is hard to tell which option for adjusting the color mode.

ReplacementPower.com Great Prices, Excellent Service.

I just bought a Power Adapter for my Compaq Presario X1000 notebook from ReplacementPower.com. They have a great selection of Power Adapters for just about any type of laptop computer. One problem. I did not know there is a difference between a "Compaq Presario 1000" and a "Compaq Presario X1000." Using their website nativagator, I ended up ordering the adapter for a Compaq 1000 instead of an X1000. I guess the X makes a big difference in this case. Without using the website navigator I manually picked the right one, but I second guessed myself. Oops my bad. They do have a large selection of adapters for any one particular model. So it is easy to get confused. I bet Replacement Power gets this a lot.

Not to worry. I called ReplacementPower.com and they are shipping me out a replacement free of charge, even though it was my fault for ordering the wrong item. Now that is some excellent customer care!

Did I mention that Replacement Power has some terrific prices? Other power adapter sites charge 40-80 dollars and Replace Power charges $30. That's a bargain. Great prices, Excellent Service. You can't beat it.

gt

UPS: I love that big brown truck.

I remember as a kid, if I saw that big brown truck come up to our farm house, I knew that something cool was coming. One day, the UPS delivery man drove up the our gravel driveway and come to the front door with a small package in his hands. I signed for it and it was something that I've been wainting for. It was "Gary Kitchen's Game Maker" for the Commodore 64.

I will always have fond memories as a child of the Big Brown Truck. Over 20 years later, it still brings a warm fuzzy feeling seeing that truck drive up to my house . I also love going to the UPS store and I always had great customer service with them. Thanks UPS! Keep up the great work.

gt

2407FPW and Love it

I just got my new Dell HD 24" Monitor today and I absolutely love it. 1920x1200 res.
Video inputs: DVD-D, Component, VGA, S-Video, and Composite.
Audio: Built-in Stereo Speaker bar.
9in2 Media Card Reader USB 2.0. Tested it with Memory stick and San Disk, works great!

Thanks Michael. This screen is awesome! Best Dell Monitor that I ever used.

gt

Should we blame companies who give bad service unintentionally?

Yes. I don't base my customer service reviews on intentions, I base it on results. If I order a product and it ends up in half way around the world by mistake, I blame the courier for 75% of it and 25% the seller for hiring such a poor delivery service.

If I return a product and it takes ages to get a refund or I have to call frequently and stay on top of the situation to get a result, I blame the seller 100% who accepted give a refund but did not carry enough the resources to handle the return in the timely fashion. Any company who has to use India for Customer Care really needs to rethink its Customer Service plans for the future because I don't think customers are going to tolerate poor customer service any longer. I'm not.

DHL Sucks. More impressed with Dell.

DHL called today. They asked if I had any idea where the monitor was shipped. I replied, "you're the ones who shipped it (to the wrong address), why are you asking me?"

I bet someone at some other company got it and took it home with them. It doesn't matter. My replacement monitor is shipping UPS and it is scheduled to be here tommorow!

While I will probably buy another Dell product, I will never allow another company to use DHL. I am not impressed with DHL at all. They seem very disorganized in this area and don't seem to care. Dell on the other hand did do everything that could to take care of the problem, once Michael got involved. CP, Dell's Executive Care rep in Texas, went the extra mile to resolve this problem hopefully once and for all. I will find out once my monitor gets here tomorrow. This time I am confident it will be over.