kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (07/15/90)
"From: mmwst1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Michael M Wagner) " "Does anyone have an opinion about the following large "screen mono or greyscale monitors " "RasterOps Clearvue 19" "SuperMac 19 or 21" "Apple 2 page display "Sigma silverview " "Mirror "Ehman "Nutmeg I use the SuperMac 19" grayscale at home and at work and there is another one at work. The display is wonderful. Everything about the monitor seems more classy than any of the other two-page displays around here (Megascreen, Radius, E-Machines, and Ehman). I was the first one to buy one (of these three) it it was because it was the first two-page monitor I could get my hands on for the SE/30. So my unit is over a year old. It had a strange habit of spewing out a pattern of pixels in a horizontal band every now and then. I could get rid of it by forcing a refresh of the screen, so I didn't report it because I didn't want to give it up. I started having hard disk problems serious enough to require service, and while the Mac was in the shop, the video card died. SuperMac replaced it, though they did send the wrong kind at first. After that I never saw the pattern of random pixels again. I had also started seeing some other problems with the display. There were intermittent flickers of horizontal white lines (maybe like dashed lines) and the whole display would jiggle (can't think of a better word) at this time. It would last maybe 10 to 15 seconds, then quit. One night the whole display blacked out for a couple seconds then came right back. After that the other problem wasn't as apparent. This happened on the day the warranty expired so I called SuperMac and they agreed to look at it under warranty. The monitor is still in the shop (I think my dealer didn't follow the procedures for sending it back and it may not really have been there that long or it may have been in transit a couple times.) One of my tests was to take the monitor to work and try it out on an identical system. This was at SuperMac's suggestion. The first day it performed flawlessly. I assumed by now that my power was dirty and called around to find a power line conditioner. Just before going out to buy it, the monitor started doing its jiggling thing again, so I took it to the dealer to send back to SuperMac instead. The two SuperMacs at work are perfect as far as I can tell. My monitor is probably a very early unit (as is my hard disk with the stiction problem) so I would be afraid to buy SuperMac again. However, unless you need the grayscale, there are MUCH cheaper alternatives. We have some of the Ehmans around here and we are highly pleased with them. As far as I know, it is the only monitor we're buying anymore. The delivery isn't very swift (plan on months of waiting), but the display is very sharp. $899 is a terrific price compared to $2500 for the same screen real estate. The SuperMac has an antiglare coating that makes it the easiest display in the building to look at all day long, but you can always add antiglare to anything else. Lots of luck on your search for the perfect monitor. I sure wish I could have color sometime, but the text display is so fuzzy compared to monochrome displays that it would be irritating trying to read it all day long. Shirley Kehr