Dell, you continue to disappoint me, but I keep coming back for more. Perhaps it’s because I know that when you do get it right, you really get it right. Remember those three 24″ wide screen monitors I ordered? They arrived on the 27th, the same day as the Velocity Micro MCE system, and late in the afternoon (after I swallowed the bitter disappointment of the busted-up computer), I thought I’d cheer myself up by setting up the new Dell monitors. With Ashley’s help unpacking, I set up the first one and braced myself, fearful of seeing the colour banding problem again. I ran the colour spectrum test and it came up clean - no banding at all. I was elated…uh, wait a second, what’s what? A stuck pixel. I ran a few more solid colour tests, and sure enough, there was one stuck pixel. Ok, scratch that monitor - what made it more complex was that I couldn’t return just one monitor as part of Dell’s 15 day “no questions asked” return policy. I thought I’d figure it out later. Then I hooked up the next one - another stuck pixel. Wow. Ashley unpacked the third one, and said something was strange - it was missing the manual and looked like it had been re-packed. Sure enough, the screen had fingerprints on it. And the LCD panel looked a bit odd. I powered it up and ran the colour spectrum test…and here’s what I saw:

That, dear friends, is a broken/cracked LCD panel with liquid crystal seeping out. Three monitors, all bad in one way or another. Is it really too unreasonable to expect that, when buying Dell’s most expensive line of monitors (Ultrasharp) that one would get a non-flawed monitor out of the box? On the bright side, all three were bad, so it was easy to ship them all back and cancel my lease. I then re-ordered them, one per order, at the $699 price (which thankfully is still being offered for a few more days). So now I have three orders on the way, one monitor per order. This gives me the flexibility to send back one monitor at a time if it’s not up to spec. I’m expecting to see the monitors come my way on the 2nd or 3rd of January - just before I leave for CES on the night of the 5th. And since the $699 price point ($200 off) is being offered until the 4th, I may have one more chance to re-order a new batch of monitors if this second batch aren’t perfect. I know, it’s bordering on insanity, but I’m not going to drop $2100 on monitors unless they are without flaws. Now that I know these monitors no longer have the colour banding issue, I hopeful that the next batch will be the ones I keep…