185A5: My screen has officially died.

[sonoronos]

Well, yet another problem with my 185A5 laptop.

http://www.nd.edu/~ekang/badscreen.jpg

That dark side of the screen is really like that - significantly darker than the other side. The previous evening the screen was fine, but this morning I started using it and within half an hour the backlight started fading.

*shakes fist*

*calls best buy*

[dang]

ouch

[Angus]

I've noticed that my 200A5's screen takes a few seconds to really warm up and get to maximum brightness. I'm really hoping this isn't an indicator of future LCD death. It's done it since day one and so far it seems to always return to full brightness. Basically, when the screen first comes on (for instance, after it automatically turned off for sleeping) it's about as bright as it should be when I turn the LCD brightness all the way down using the FN keys. Within about 5 seconds the screen will have brightened to full blast. So far so good (knock on wood) and I'm hoping this is just some regular varience in LCD backlights.

[sonoronos]

Angus,

I myself never noticed a warmup period, but I did notice that some days the backlight looked brighter than other times.

I called Best Buy and they're sending me a box. The female tech on the other end of the line was absolutely charming and she led me through a safe mode reboot along with a bios check, to double-check that the screen darkening problem wasn't due to a software problem. :sure

Being the gentleman that I am, I didn't bother pointing out the obvious error of her reasoning. But there's two rules I follow. One is, never anger the people fixing your equipment. Two is, never scorn a woman who is obviously trying to be nice to you :D

[sonoronos]

A guy from VPR Matrix just gave me a call to make sure that the issue with my screen and my wifi switch were unrelated to the original problems I had when I first called with problems about my matrix. He wanted to know if everything was ok with the machine, and if the original issues were fixed.

Best Buy may be strange, but VPR Matrix's CSR's are impressing me so far.

[kozz]

Indeed vpr CS is awesome!, it took me 2 days to receive my wireless pcmcia replacement.

So there is two CS here, one sux and one dont.

Go VPR !!

BestBuy SUX!!!

[geekrock99]

sorry about your screen, hope you have a crt or lcd you can use while waiting for your box, but its great that you're getting nice treatment from vpr. keep us updated.

geekrock99