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Dell 2408WFP POS

Posted 3 months, 1 week ago at 4:13 am. 2 comments

I got two Dell 2408WFP’s a while back here at Blue Lava and have pretty mixed feelings towards them. Right now I am in a pretty crummy mood so this mini-review-rant will be pretty biased towards the negatives, but do enjoy.

The company actually ordered four units. Two for me, and two for the other graphic designer here. My boss subsequently felt he needed one, so snuck an extra fifth one in there too. When they arrived, they were massive. Massive. A friend of mine has two of the previous revision, the 2407WFP (which are actually better displays in a lot of tests), but seeing four of these right next to each other was just obsurd.

Not only are they fucking huge, but they are thick, and emit more heat than a hippopotamus menstruating in July. I’m a big guy myself, so sitting with two space heaters in front of you all day and night is not pleasant. Especially when i’m surrounded a bunch of nine-to-fivers who won’t pay good money to keep their developers nice and cool while working into the wee hours of the morning. The developers come first, they are the ones on the ground doing all of the infantry work. The guys who spend a few hours a day in the office in their aloha shirts can go play in the fuck-off sandbox.

I’m typing this on my trusty ‘ol sidekick — my Macbook Pro — because my shiny gleaming 8-core Mac Pro between my legs right now is essentially the headless horseman thanks to the amazingly awesome quality control at Dell.

My first monitor turns on and works just fine, but twin #2 isn’t on the ball today. He keeps going into sleep mode, and won’t ever respond to anything. Another thing that this marvelous evening has taught me is that if there are no input devices plugged into the display, you can’t use the onboard menu system! Also, the trusty Dell manual offers no way to do some sort of hard reset. Everything needs a hard reset.

Yes, I’ve tried unplugging the power cord. Yes, I’ve tried “rebooting my computer”. All the typical shit. Plugging #1 into my Macbook works just fine. #2 chokes like a barely legal teen and falls back into power save mode. I’ve tried different cables, different ports on the display. I’m going to try VGA right now. Oh what do you know, FAIL! So three of it’s display ports do not work at all (DVI1, DVI2, and VGA with a VGA=>DVI converter). I’ll go ahead and assume that the component, S-Video, and other ports don’t work either. So now I have a real space heater. It’s a shame I live in Hawaii and not Alaska. I should move to Canada and become an Ice Trucker. Would rather troubleshoot a jake brake than this Dell plastic disaster.

Time to give the wonderful technicians over in Mother India a call!

To be honest though, this isn’t that big of a deal to me. These displays are too big and hot. Two displays are certainly nice, but honestly one does just fine. The CTO here and my close friend Jason will object, touting that two displays increase productivity by a significant margin. I personally think it’s a matter of choice and feel that one display, for me is just fine. My other display is primarily used for iTunes, Adium, and other miscellaneous crap which doesn’t really warrant a secondary monitor.

In fact, one of my co-workers and another close friend Oliver Beattie, only uses one of his dual displays. The week prior to his arrival here in Honolulu we ordered him dual 22′ Dell displays, and the only thing he uses his second display for is his Adium contact list. He’s been here for three months and still hasn’t adjusted!

So in just a few moments I will gladly unplug the uncooperative “#2″ and put it over in the corner, like an obnoxious ginger freckle-faced stepchild. At some point this year someone here at the company will get to replacing it. I personally have no desire or motivation to, so chances are it will just sit in the corner and collect lucky Hawaiian spirit of aloha dust.