It's a whole new bag, baby (How to bring your PC close to "current" in $1,159 easy dollars)

First off, it's important to understand I've been running a dual-head display system on my PC for the last sixteen months or so. With that knowledge, you'll better understand how this avalanche got started and lead to the final result.

On Thursday night I found that Dell was having another sale on their wonderful UltraSharp 2005 FPW monitor. I had picked up one of these a few weeks ago to replace the giant 21" Sun CRT that was sitting on my desk and I've loved every minute since. The panel is bright, it's widescreen, it's sharp as heck and I have space available on my desk again. I decided to buy this second one because my old Sony Trinitron Multiscan 200sx has been feeling its age lately. When I wake the monitors up from standby the LCD snaps to life (given its digital nature this is expected) and the Trinitron ... well, it doesn't. What it will do is take 30 seconds to warm up and, once glowing, spend a minute or two flickering, buzzing and rolling like an old TV before it stabilizes. I take that as a sign, so I ordered the second 2005FPW on Thursday night with the intent of using it to replace the Trinitron.

( All seemed well until.... )

So there you have it, step by sickening step: that's how the purchase of a $410 monitor spurs me into building a whole new PC from the ground-up that's almost three times the cost of the instigating part.

Grab that cash

It's a whole new bag, baby (How to bring your PC close to "current" in $1,159 easy dollars)

First off, it's important to understand I've been running a dual-head display system on my PC for the last sixteen months or so. With that knowledge, you'll better understand how this avalanche got started and lead to the final result.

On Thursday night I found that Dell was having another sale on their wonderful UltraSharp 2005 FPW monitor. I had picked up one of these a few weeks ago to replace the giant 21" Sun CRT that was sitting on my desk and I've loved every minute since. The panel is bright, it's widescreen, it's sharp as heck and I have space available on my desk again. I decided to buy this second one because my old Sony Trinitron Multiscan 200sx has been feeling its age lately. When I wake the monitors up from standby the LCD snaps to life (given its digital nature this is expected) and the Trinitron ... well, it doesn't. What it will do is take 30 seconds to warm up and, once glowing, spend a minute or two flickering, buzzing and rolling like an old TV before it stabilizes. I take that as a sign, so I ordered the second 2005FPW on Thursday night with the intent of using it to replace the Trinitron.

( All seemed well until.... )

So there you have it, step by sickening step: that's how the purchase of a $410 monitor spurs me into building a whole new PC from the ground-up that's almost three times the cost of the instigating part.

Grab that cash