Today (ok, really, Friday… with my current sleep and waking schedule I tend to think of days as running from noon to noon rather than from midnight to midnight) I had to place an order for a new computer monitor.
A couple of weeks ago my current monitor, which has performed nearly perfectly for several years, just suddenly shut itself off while I was in the middle of working on something — in fact, I’d been continually working at the computer nonstop for many, many hours (so it wasn’t a result of the power settings option to turn the monitor off during non-use). The power switch was operational; if you’d press it, the little green LED would light, but there’d be no solenoid-like click or degaussing sparking hum. If you’d depress it, the green light would fade to amber, as normal, then off.
After a few hours, I tried it again, and the monitor clicked, sparked, hummed and the screen lit back up. And all was good with the world.
A few weeks go by with no problems. Then two nights ago, zap… it happens again. Same symptoms, same solution: wait a while, then turn it back on. But this time, it doesn’t stay on very long before doing it again. It’s been doing this off and on, now, for the past two days. It does seem to be related to the temperature of the monitor; the room where the computer is located tends to be the warmest in the house anyway; even though its a very large room, it only has one a/c duct (and while I haven’t been running the a/c yet this year, that room doesn’t cool as well as the rest of the house), one window (so there’s little to no cross-ventilation), and it houses the computer, peripherals, 19″ monitor, stereo system, and large-screen TV, so there’s more heat generated there as well. I discovered that if I turned the light next to the computer to its lowest setting, the monitor would become ready again more quickly, but extended use would eventually cause it to shut itself down regardless.
A search online uncovered some postings from other owners of this model noting the same problem, though in some cases this was happening to them well within the warranty period and even with the replacements sent to them by the manufacturer. So this seems to be a documented problem for this model; I’ve just been lucky that I’ve been using it for at least three to four years with no previous symptoms.
Since the prognosis seemed to be that the symptoms would only worsen in frequency and length, I decided to go ahead and order another monitor; not my top choice for how to spend my dwindling resources, but the computer is essential to the job hunt as well as to my own emotional well-being, and even 19″ monitors now are reasonably priced and affordable. But now I have to wait several days for the new monitor to arrive. So tonight, after multiple occasions of having to turn the monitor off, wait an hour or so, try it again, work a bit, rinse and repeat, I decided to try an experiment. I brought out my small electric fan, set it up on the desk pointed at the top and back of the monitor where I could feel the heat most intensely, and turned it on. Since then I’ve been working longer without a cessation of monitor activity longer than I’ve managed all day, so this may be a reasonable temporary assist, knock on wood.