Review: Samsung Syncmaster P2770HD Monitor/HDTV

If you read my previous post about the 27" LG monitor I bought (which died after just 14 total hours of use) I exchanged it for a Samsung Syncmaster P2770HD monitor/HDTV in part because the store didn't have any more of the LG monitors, and in part because - after such a bad experience with them - I didn't want another one.

Samsung has a pretty good reputation in the flat panel biz, both with their computer monitors and HDTVs, and this was the monitor I had originally been considering until that damned LG seduced me with it's S-Video port and $80 lower price.

Pros:

Crisp text in computer mode, great color, decent built-in speakers with 5.1 surround and SRS. Remote control makes it easy to switch modes and control TV from a slightly more viewable distance. Feels very solidly built (meaning it's also HEAVY). If all that screen acreage is a bit much for you it includes something called "Multiscreen" which lets you portion off the screen into smaller virtual screens.

Cons:

No tilt adjustment on the acrylic base. It's head on only, so you're desk/chair better adjust to the monitor, not the other way 'round. Remote has some buttons on it that are poorly explained in the manual (in fact I've yet to figure out what two of them even do). Built-in speakers could stand a bit more volume range - I really have to crank it up just to hear it well from a decent viewing distance. A signal strength indicator for digital TV channels would be nice too. Also, it seems there's a bit of motion blur in TV mode that I don't see in computer mode (while playing a game).

All in all, though, I'm quite happy with this monitor and would recommend it to anyone looking for a big - but not TOO big - screen.

Review: LG M2762D-PM HDTV/Monitor

I finally decided to drop on a new flat panel computer monitor, and I haven't yet upgraded from the 32" CRT TV to an HDTV. So when I saw a 27" LG M2762D-PM combo computer monitor and HDTV for $360 at Microcenter I jumped on it. I initially thought I was lucky to have nabbed the last one in the store (possibly the last one any one of their stores had - as it can't be found on their website anymore as of this writing). Turns out I was wrong about being lucky. Read on. . .

Pros

Very good price for a monitor/HDTV at this size. That was primarily what attracted me to it was the price, but it's also a good looking set. There's only so much designers can really do with the flat panel format, so it's all down to the bezel. The LG has a cool glossy acrylic frame that goes from black to clear at the bottom edge. All buttons are touch sensitive (i.e., there are no actual buttons). It had an acceptable HDTV picture, and the tuner (like a lot of HD sets) has an indicator for signal strength, program info, etc. Auto programming was simple, in fact the whole On Screen Display was very nicely laid out and polished in appearance. The remote was good, the main feature of which was one button access to switching the source from TV to computer. Unlike some monitors in its class this one did have a tilt adjustment. It does have an S-Video input on the back, in addition to all the other requisite HDTV and computer monitor ports.

Cons

Base seemed a bit flimsy, though the monitor itself isn't all that heavy so it may be adequate. "Vivid" color is TOO vivid - like clown colors that punch your eyes out. Thankfully you can dial it down to something watchable. Text in computer mode wasn't very crisp, even with font smoothing turned on. The built-in speakers are garbage - very tinny and not enough volume. Doesn't ship with either an HDMI nor DVI cable, just a VGA cable. Like anyone is using VGA anymore?! Plus, the whole point is to get a crisp DIGITAL picture, right?

But there is one gigantic 800-pound gorilla of a negative regarding my experience with this monitor: IT DIED AFTER JUST 14 HOURS OF USE!!!

I bought it on a Saturday afternoon. Surfed the net a bit, then watched some TV shows and turned it off to go to bed. Sunday morning I turned it on, checked my e-mail, watched a TV show, then turned it off to do something else. Two hours later I returned, hit the "Power" button on the remote and. . .nothing. Touched the power button on the front of the monitor. . .nothing. The thing was stone dead just like that.

Boxed it up again, took it back to the store and exchanged it for a Samsung Syncmaster P2770HD monitor/HDTV, which is what I should have bought in the first place.

Linux Nvidia Overscan Fix

The ATI graphics card in this media center recently died and I decided to avoid all the ATI-related issues and just put a Nvidia card in instead.

This allowed me to upgrade the operating system to the (current) Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx - well, I decided I like the Linux Mint 9 version a bit better. Nvidia's Linux drivers are much, much better than ATI's.

The last problem remaining was the "overscan" - well, for me it was actually UNDERSCAN, which puts black border all the way around the picture. The newest Nvidia drivers do have a slider and text entry box for overscan correction. This works for some people, but I was in the camp for whom the control panel crashes if I touch the slider.

The default values the Nvidia driver inserts vary and I don't know what determines what they are but I suspect it's tied to resolution as it was "13" at 1024x768 and "8" at 800x600. Most sites that talk about how to fix this talk about "Modelines" and other Xorg.conf fixes, but thanks to THIS POST there is a MUCH easier fix to implement! Enter the following line in a terminal:

$ sudo nvidia-settings -c :0.0 -a 'TVOverScan[TV-0]=15'

Your value may be different, but for my set-up "15" is the magic number that fills the screen. I found that even using "sudo" permissions and saving settings to xorg.conf with the Nvidia Control Panel that this setting didn't stick after a reboot. It's annoying to have to re-enter it on every boot and I also realized it doesn't HAVE to be entered with "sudo" which makes it a cinch to execute at startup. Just take that line and (without the sudo) paste it into a text file and save with a simple name like "nvidia-fix" into your home folder. Right+Click, go to Permissions, and check the "executable" box. Then, I used the "Start Up Programs" control panel and created a new entry with the command to execute that text file as a program (the same as if I'd typed it in a terminal):

./nvidia-fix

and name the entry something that will make it execute AFTER the Nvidia Panel is loaded (I named mine "Overscan").

Now, every time I reboot the media center it loads the Nvidia stuff (with the black border all the way around) and within a second the fix script executes and expands the picture to fill the screen, then XBMC launches full screen. Simple! Fully automatic fix at every boot, no mucking with the Nvidia control panel, no editing your xorg.conf file.

Note: When you run the overscan fix without sudo permissions and you launch the Nvidia Control Panel the fix will be over-ridden by whatever setting is in the panel (the screen will shrink and the black border will re-appear). Make whatever changes you were going to make, save them to your xorg.conf file (if you want them to persist beyond the current session), and then either re-run the overscan fix script or reboot the system so is auto-runs again.

Review: Matias USB 2.0 Keyboard vs. Apple Aluminum Keyboard

I know some people rave about the Apple aluminum keyboard, so I'm probably in the minority of people who don't like it. Actually I really kind of hate it.

Sure, it's thin and sleek - it wouldn't look out of place in a modern art museum collection. However, I can't stand typing on the damned thing. I tend to type in bursts, usually around 80 wpm at about 90% accuracy - some people have said listening to me type sounds like a machine gun! LOL I'm definitely not one of those people who "caresses" a keyboard and I generally don't even look at the keyboard unless I need a key I don't tend to hit very often. Which is why the Apple keyboard bugs me. First of all the keys are too FLAT. I like the dished keytop as it helps me to better feel my positioning on the keys. Sure those little bumps on the home keys help make sure you're not typing gibberish, but totally flat keys just feel awful to me. According to what I've read, the Apple aluminum keyboard is supposed to be similar to a laptop keyboard, and I hate typing on a laptop keyboard too. They frankly feel like calculator keys - or (and this just popped into my head) it reminds me of the Timex-Sinclair 1500 "chicklet" keyboard. Oh, and the USB port on it is tucked under the edge which is a pain in the butt when you want to plug a thumb drive in there (especially desirable if you're using the iMac) you pretty much have to fumble around until you plug it in sight unseen OR you end up lifting the keyboard to see where the port is and plug in your device.

There also isn't enough travel to the keys when you type like I do. On the Apple keyboard I continually found myself entering keystrokes when I hadn't intended to do so, and because I press the keys pretty hard the shorter travel results in greater finger fatigue for me. All in all, the Apple keyboard cuts my speed and accuracy in half. Obviously that's not the case for everyone, as you don't have to look far online to find people who LOVE that keyboard and argue it's possibly one of the best Apple ever made. That's fine if it works for you, but it doesn't mean I have to live with it.

Secondary problem is that I switch back and forth between Mac and Windows a lot on the same machine. I know other people who do that with Parallels rather than rebooting into another drive or partition, but the problem is the same - Mac and Windows keyboards are NOT alike! You always have to make a trade-off when platform hopping between the two with keys being in different order or some functionality missing whether you try to use a Windows keyboard on a Mac or an Apple keyboard on a Windows machine. It's annoying!

Clarification: Someone said to me today "All USB keyboards are cross-platform compatible." Well, yes, technically they are. The keys will just re-map, and a Windows keyboard will use function keys for media keys, etc. But this is about having a keyboard that actually HAS all the keys for both platforms as well as has the keys MARKED for both platforms where they are different. This same person also told me "Logitech makes keyboards for both Mac and Windows." I went to the Logitech web site and, sure, they have check-boxes to narrow your search to "Mac compatible" and "Windows Compatible" keyboards. All of which are gaming keyboards and all of which are ONLY have their keys marked for use on Windows.

Which is why I'm really diggin' this new Matias USB 2.0 keyboard. Nice, springy, responsive keys with the right amount of travel, just enough dishing so you don't end up with high or sharp edges, a 2 port USB 1.0 hub for my mouse and tablet and a single USB 2.0 port on top for easily plugging in my thumb drive. But the coup de grace to my Apple keyboard experience is that this is a CROSS-PLATFORM keyboard! It's kind of weird to see a keyboard with BOTH a (Windows Logo) and (Mac Command) symbol on it, but if anyone else sits down at my computer - regardless of which OS I've booted - there would be no guessing which keys to press.

Well, maybe unless you want to eject the DVD drive - that requires holding down F12 in OS X, but for some reason Matias didn't bother putting the "eject" icon on it. I do, however, have volume control keys nicely made half the height of the surrounding keys so they're harder to hit by accident and easier to find by feel. They also had a really good idea regarding the Caps Lock key - instead of being over by the Tab key (where people - including me - hit it by accident all the frickin' time) they moved it to the lower right next to the Alt/Command key. They also put the Num Lock key there and replaced it with a Tab key on the keypad - which is sweet for entering data ten-key style in forms or spreadsheets. Set-up on Mac does require you to reassign the Command and Option keys so they match the keyboard layout. Windows automatically recognizes it as a Windows keyboard and USB hub.

The only design changes I think I'd make to it (or recommend Matias consider) are to add that eject icon to the F12 key (or maybe ADD an eject key - there's plenty of room above the keypad), and possibly move that USB 2.0 port into the bezel space on the left side of the keyboard by the additional CTRL key. Why? Because my keyboard sits in a pull out tray and unless I pull it out so far it's falling into my lap the USB 2.0 port is still under the desk top where I can't plug my thumb drive into it. Other than that, this is one of the nicest keyboards I've used in a long time and it can be had for a pretty reasonable price of around $30. I got mine at Micro Center, but tons of places online carry them, and you can buy direct too. If you dual boot, are using Parallels a lot, or if you also don't like the Apple aluminum keyboard, you may want to give this one a try.

Linkworld "Imposter" Case

I'm building up yet another computer so I recently bought this case from NewEgg.com (Linkworld model 431-0 C.2222) for a little less than $40. It is also available in silver, by the way.

The Cons

Well, some would argue the case design itself if the con, as in "con job" since it's obviously made to remind us of a certain fruit-themed professional computer. But setting that aside for the moment and just talking about the case itself, this thing is a VERY cheaply made case. It is made of rather thin sheets of metal, though the rolls and indentations do lend it a little bit of strength I wouldn't set anything heavy on it. The "handles" are just loops of plastic, and many of the reviews I'd read online about this case noted that the case arrived either with plastic already broken (the shipping box has almost not padding, I'm surprised mine survived UPS shipping) or that as soon as you had some weight in the case and picked it up by the handles they cracked off.

I'd also read comments that this case was, at one time, sold as JUST a case for around $10. That's honestly about what it's worth, but mine was the aforementioned higher price and came with a case fan and a Power Supply Unit installed. I wish I'd found this case for the cheaper price, because I'm going to just throw the PSU away because it's an obvious POS. It is the single lightest weight PSU I've ever held, which makes me seriously doubt it can handle the 500W rating printed on the side. It's frankly the sort of PSU that is a fried motherboard waiting to happen. The case fan is very standard, with no markings to help me know who made it. If you were going for a pimped out case with LEDs you'd be tossing this fan anyway. I'll probably leave it in the case until it inevitably starts screaming or just stops turning.

It's a fairly tight case, so expect things to be crammed together and also expect you'll cut a knuckle or two on the sharp metal edges trying to fit components inside. It's not the most compact case I've been inside of, but it's not spacious by any stretch of the imagination.

No front panel Firewire, even though there is a spot for one and the front-panel circuit board is drilled out for a port and header. They obviously decided the few pennies it would cost to add them was just too big an investment in this case, which is truly built to a very thin penny.

The Pros

The front (plastic) panel has a ton of holes in it, so I'd think this case will have very good ventilation. Heat is a real computer killer, and it seems like no matter how many fans I stick in my current system it's never enough. I plan to have a virtual hurricane blowing through this case. It also has two nice doors for optical drives that flip down when the CD/DVD tray pushes them open, which always looks nicer and cleaner than the actual faceplate of the drive - and also means you can install drives with mismatched colors or brands since they'll be hidden from view instead of sticking out the front of the computer all the time.

The plastic "handles" on the bottom hold the case up off the floor. I've noticed with most towers, sitting on carpet under desks the front case fan - almost always located at the bottom front - tends to quickly get clogged up with dust bunnies and pet hair - or whatever else is blowing around on your carpet. I'm hopeful that having the case up on stilts will reduce that problem. A case with handles is also considered a "pro" for those who like to drag them to LAN parties or use them to DJ (see below for "Improvement" to make the handles something you can actually hang on to).

I suppose "it's cheap" is also in its favor. If you want your computer to look like the bastard child of that certain other computer the design may be in a "pro" in your book as well. It does have a nice floppy drive face integrated into the front panel, which nicely hides the ugly standard floppy faceplate - though it would be nice if they also gave a blank out plate since the era of floppy drives is pretty much over. The 3.5" bay below the floppy drive looks like it has a blank out plate in it, but it's actually a flip-down door. So if you install a media reader or fan controls or whatever in that bay you can hide them behind a little door which give a cleaner look.

It does have a "vent tunnel" for the CPU cooler to the side panel. That's nice for pulling in (presumably) colder air from outside the case which is why I put it under "pros." Though, since the CPU can be located literally anywhere on the motherboard, those vent tunnels rarely seem to line up where they'll do any good, so it may also be a "con" depending on what mobo you stick in the case.

It's pretty much standard these days, but I have seen cases that omit them, so I'll also mention the two USB ports up front and jacks for headphones and a microphone.

Improvements

With a little work this case can be beefed up a bit. I'm not talking about full on "case modding" here, just simple stuff you can do in an afternoon with a screwdriver and a power drill.

1. Handles you CAN hold on to!

I'm sure the main reasons people have had the plastic handles crack off are because of how they are attached to the case, not the quality of the plastic itself.

The rear "handles" are each attached with two small screws on each side of the case (A) and the front handles are actually part of a single plastic "shroud" around the entire front panel and attach with four very, very tiny screws on the top and four on the bottom (B). First thing I noticed upon lifting up this case - empty - was the handles could MOVE! Movement can lead to cracking, cracking can lead to suffering, and suffering. . .wait, I wasn't gong to do the Yoda quote.

I replaced the eight screws on the back (A) with stove bolts secured with nuts from the back side. You need very short bolts (I had to cut mine down) because on the bottom they'll intrude upon the motherboard mounting plate and on the top the PSU. I also needed to drill out the holes a little larger to do this, but now there is absolutely NO slop in the top back handle, where it had an obvious gap before between it and the case top.

I then replaced the eight screws on the front handles (B) with much larger (but still black and countersunk) sheet metal screws. If you don't mind them poking up inside the case the length isn't that critical (I used 1/2" long ones) since there's nothing in their way. The original screws are so small they have almost zero bite into the case metal, and one of the top screws on mine was stripped out. You could also drill and bolt these if you like, but if you're going to do that I'd recommend only doing it on the bottom where nobody can see it.

2. Front Case Fan

Since you'll have the front plastic off anyway, that's a good time to install a front case fan (D) since you won't be able to even access the two lower screws unless you take ALL the plastic off the front of the case!

3. No Tools Required

Make it a "no tools required" case! I know some reviewers hated the "Card Clamp" this case has on the back, and I've never seen anything like it before myself. Usually PCI cards are secured to the case with a single screw through their backing plate, or on some cases a plastic lever locks each one down. This case has a single clamp that runs across all the installed cards to lock them down. Well, the case that inspired this one's design has a "no tools" system for locking down PCI cards, so I thought "why not this one too?" It's really easy - just replace the two hex head phillips screws (C) on the clamp with computer case thumb screws! Then also replace the side panel screws with thumb screws. Now you won't need any tools to enter the case or to add/remove a PCI card. Now the clamp isn't some weird lock-down method, it's a convenience feature!

4. Add Firewire

As I mentioned, the front panel ports don't include a Firewire connection, even though there is space for one. If you're good with board-level soldering you could easily add one, as the circuit board is already drilled for the port and header, and the case front has a corresponding knock-out for it, so you wouldn't have to hack the case to add it. I thought about going to the trouble, but I only have one Firewire device left and it also has a USB 2.0 connector so I really don't NEED a front Firewire port - or ANY Firewire ports for that matter. I plant to cover up the knock-out on the front panel with one of the system stickers (those little ones that say what CPU is inside or Graphics Card). That will make for easy hardware reference, but also nicely hide the stickers under the door for the front panel jacks.

Sourcing Apple

I've been curious lately as to who REALLY manufactures products for Apple. It's well known that Apple doesn't have it's own factories, but contracts other manufacturers to make its stuff. They're not alone in the electronics business - most brand name computer products are actually manufactured by someone else, or at least the components are.

I'm not really interested in the endless "Apple Tax" arguments about Macs being overpriced compared to Windows systems of similar specifications. What I was interested in was the fact that Apple products consistently rank very highly - alongside Asus, who also manufacture parts for Apple, and Toshiba - in terms of reliability and build quality. If I'm going to build a custom system I want to use solid, well built components. So it is worthwhile to research who met the quality standards of a brand ranked high in reliability, right?

Ok, so I don't know exactly which components some of these companies make for Apple, but an afternoon of online research yielded the following list.

Lian Li

CASES

Mac Pro

Other Macs?

Foxconn Electronics / Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.

LOGIC BOARDS

Mac Mini

Mac Pro

iPod

iPod Nano

Invantec Appliances

Video iPods

Asustek Computer

iPod Shuffle

12.1" /13.5" / 14.1: MacBook

Quanta Computer (who also manufacture the OLPC I believe)

iMac

MacBook Pro

some iPods

WinTek

TOUCH SCREENS

iPhone

iPod Touch

iPad

LG

Apple LCD displays

HARD DRIVES

Desktops: Seagate or Western Digital

Laptops/Mini: Fujitsu or Seagate

Apple RAM

Usually Micron, may also be Samsung or Hynix.

GRAPHICS CARDS

No idea who actually manufactures Apple branded cards, but the chips are either made by Nvidia or ATi and at least one integrated video chip - the Nvidia 320M - was manufactured exclusively for Apple.

And, if you want the same kind of rock-solid UNIX-based operating system too? How 'bout another UNIX-based OS for FREE! Mac OS X was based on parts of FreeBSD and NetBSD combined into Darwin, which forms the UNIX underpinnings of OS X. You could either install a FreeBSD or NetBSD or you can actually get Darwin for free as well. This doesn't give you Mac OS, though, as a lot of what comprises Mac OS is in a higher-level, proprietary layer used and required by "Mac Native" applications to work, so you can't run Mac native software on Darwin. What you CAN do, though, is run thousands of UNIX and Linux programs, and you can install a GUI desktop environment like Gnome or KDE and "theme" it to look just like Mac OS X, and install AWN Dock which works just like the one in OS X.

If BSD or Darwin are too intimidating, get a Linux distribution since they often have "Live" discs that let you try before you install, and have nice installation wizards when you've found one you like. Whichever UNIX or Linux you choose, you can also use a compatibility layer called "WINE" to run many (but not all) Windows programs - without having to have Windows installed. For many users a BSD or Linux install will meet their needs as well as Windows or Mac OS - especially if most of what you do is surf the web, e-mail, chat, watch videos, use an office software suite there is no reason to be spending money on an operating system or software to do those things. It's only when you need to use professional applications (such as Adobe Creative Suite or Final Cut Pro) that you NEED to have a commercial operating system capable of running them.

Spoofing Google Chrome

Yes, there are STILL web sites out there that do "browser detection" rather than "feature detection." A good example of this is actually Apple's own HTML5 Showcase, which directs anyone visiting it who isn't already using Apple's "Safari" browser to download it in order to see the content.

Let me go off on an Apple tangent for a moment:

This is blatantly NOT how you are supposed to do detection for support of HTML5 features! They're clearly doing it on purpose to give the (false) impression that ONLY their web browser supports this stuff. If you visit the showcase with Google's Chrome browser you'll still get the "download Safari" message, even though both Safari and Chrome are built atop the same Webkit core. Small point, but Apple also uses a lot of Webkit-specific CSS in their showcase too, when there are perfectly good standards-compliant equivalents available, which means other browsers that DO support HTML5 (like Opera and nightly builds of Firefox) won't render the content correctly because they aren't built on Webkit. C'mon Apple! Don't put up a site that is supposed to showcase HTML5 standards compliance and then use non-compliant CSS!!

Ok, back to Google Chrome:

Because Chrome is the new kid on the block and doesn't support add-ons (yet) you can't easily "spoof" the User Agent for the browser. The "User Agent" is a string that the browser reports to web sites that request it telling the site what kind of browser it is. When you send a user agent string that is different from the actual one, it is called "spoofing." The Opera browser has long had a built-in option to spoof (or they call it "mask") as other browsers, because so few sites are built with Opera in mind if there is any code on the site that requires a specific browser (like Firefox or Internet Explorer) you have to set Opera to lie to the site to get the code to work properly. This was even more of a problem back in the early D0t.Com era when so many sites were designed for either IE or Netscape to the exclusion of each other and everyone else! There are add-ons for Firefox that allow it to masquerade as other browsers - should you stumble across one of these anachronistic web sites. But what about Google Chrome?

Well, there isn't an add-on or a built-in method, but it's still relatively easy to do (Windows instructions):

1. Find the Shortcut to Google Chrome that is most likely on your desktop.

2. Copy the Shortcut and Paste the copy somewhere (like back on the desktop).

3. Right+Click and select "Properties"

4. In the first box named "Target" you'll need to add the following to the line that's already there:

--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.1 Safari/533.4"

5. Rename the Shortcut "Chrome as Safari"

6. Use this shortcut to launch Chrome and it will automatically be masquerading as Safari 4.1

Don't believe me? Follow the steps and then go to the Apple HTML5 Showcase mentioned above. You won't get the "Download Safari" message!

You can replace the User Agent string with the string from any other browser, so you could also make shortcuts that launch Google Chrome as Firefox or as Internet Explorer.