My neighbour Nik has a way with technology, and it is not a good way. Almost everything he owns tends to expire in a shower of sparks or cloud of smoke, long before you would normally expect to see sparks or clouds.
His latest disaster is his Olympus EM-5 which has a hole in the sensor, or so he reckons. I reckon it is just a big dust spot which needs a professional clean, but it could end up being a hole given the way he keeps jabbing at it with assorted implements; most of which should not be seen within a centimetre of a sensor.
Hot on the heels of the holy E-M5, his computer has failed. The victims turned out to be two hard drives. which probably indicates something more fundamental like a faulty motherboard; which will only become evident once he has spent three days re-installing everything (the joy of Windows).
He came to see me yesterday and I couldn’t help mentioning that when I lost my boot drive in my Mac, it took about an hour to re-instate the system to its previous state. “Yes”, I gloated, “I certainly love my lovely Mac”, as I turned it on in preparation to give him some totally legal downloaded movies. At which point, my Apple Cinema Display failed.
This could be coincidence, but I am fairly sure this is due to the invisible technology disruption aura that surrounds Nik and fucks up equipment wherever he goes. He tried to blame it on the cat who he reckoned was “looking shifty”, but we all know who is to blame.
Or it could just be that is was time for the monitor to die. Apple provide a one year warranty, which you can extend to three years if you pay some money (which I hadn’t); so obsolescence at close to four years sounds about right from their point of view; or very wrong from my point of view given I paid more than 30k for the bloody thing.
So now I am working on my piece of shit Samsung TFT monitor which I OK for typing but abysmal for photos. Tomorrow I will take the Apple to a shop in Chonburi that knows a little man who fixes Apple gear without all the hassle and expense of dragging the thing to the Apple repair centre in Bangkok. I am doubtful that a repair will be cost-effective, but fingers crossed.
If a repair proves uneconomic, then I will be in the market for something new. A Dell seems like a cost-effective solution, until you start reading the horror stories regarding their quality control.
Whatever the solution, the main lesson I have learned is to never let Nik near any of my equipment ever again. And, just in case, the cats are now banned from the computer room too.
Comments 🔗
2013-08-16| Andrew saysIhave a Dell 24" Ultrasharp flat panel which has been pretty good for almost 5 yrs - now it has some purple lines when it has a cold start but they go away after it warms up….I also have been looking into a good monitor for photo work - my advice - don’t look! - you might get one if you sell your beloved 75mm Oly lens….plus a kidney or 2….Apples have nice monitors but the gamut is quite low compared to any other “decent” monitor…some food for thought: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1171253
2013-08-16| Chang Noi saysDell makes some very nice display’s but price-wise come close to Apple (actually technically also pretty close so I think it are actually the same displays). Of course in this country of cheap Somchai’s this Dell display’s are not for sale. And although the Apple displays are indeed very colourful for that price you could make a great photograph-holiday.
2013-08-16| Spike saysLike most monitors, the Cinema Display is sRGB colour space, which is the standard for the web (and for most print shops unless you are going very high end). If you buy a monitor with a wider gamut, it will only be useful for higher end graphics and printing work; with much fiddling around to make things acceptable for the rest of the world using sRGB. I am just a hobbyist so sRGB is good enough for me. The 27" Apple Cinema Display is 34k baht; I can get a decent 27" Dell (U2713HM for example) for almost half that price. The advantage of the ACD is that display is gorgeous (provided you can manage the glossy finish) and the quality control is far superior to Dell; the downside is the evil price and the lack of connectivity.
2013-08-16| Spike saysThis was true four years ago, but not any more. The latest Dell monitors are now for sale in Thailand via Dell or other outlets, e.g. InvadeIT: http://www.invadeit.co.th/category/monitors/dell/sort/price/desc/