Lost In The Crowd

So I got this amazing idea when I went to turn in my laptop to support center at IT mall last saturday, get new monitor. My old monitor was 17″ CRT NESO TD770A which is pretty decent back in days and frankly nothing wrong with it to ensure upgrading, beside I want to buy something (one of my bad habit, shopping syndrome I guess). I spent few hours after turn in my laptop to browse a lot of stores in the mall and got impressed with 22″ one and devoted next week to do homework on it.

Brand

There are few brands come to my mind when I’m picking the monitor, LG, Samsung and HP. Those brands pretty much limited to what we have in store here, we don’t have many brand with authorized dealers and I don’t really want to buy a store imported goods basically because the guarantee and support matters. Actually there are few more brands with authorized dealers such as Asus, Acer etc. but I rule them out because I don’t think they are good at monitor production, sure Asus is great at VGA, M/B stuff but they are just new in monitor market and probably need more time to prove them self, I rather go with those brands that are already good at monitor production.

I choose Samsung because their monitor really have good design with glossy black frame and good reputation dealers which pretty handy when I need to claim or support plus price is affordable, HP is good too but price is high compare to the rest and I don’t like how their monitor look much :X

Model

Samsung 2253LW

or

Samsung 2232GW

I think this is the easiest part of choosing monitor, both of them are pretty much same beside few points here

Viewable size

2232GW beat 2253LW by a little bit, 22″ (2232GW) VS 21.6″ (2253LW)

Contrast ratio (Dynamic contrast)

2253LW has higher contrast ratio, 8000:1 (2253LW) VS 3000:1 (2232GW)

Type of screen

2232GW has glossy screen (crystal bright, glass screen, w/e you call it) while 2253LW has normal TFT screen

Pricing

2253LW is cheaper than 2232GW by a little bit here, 9,200 baht (2253LW) VS 9,900 baht (2232GW)

Actually this isn’t hard for me at all since I don’t care much about viewable size (I definitely can’t notice 0.4″ difference anyway) and contrast ratio (which 3000:1 is good enough for me) so it comes to type of screen and I hate, really hate glossy screen type. My laptop has glossy screen and it really kills my eye after I work with it for awhile, can’t really see thing while I’m in room with many light spot and also suck up dust a lot :X only upside is it look really cool and probably give better result when watching movie but no way that will triumph its cons.

The winner is Samsung 2253LW!

So I plan to go to mall and buy it next saturday (which is yesterday), my plan was like go to friend master degree graduate ceremony in afternoon and go to buy monitor after. Everything went fine until I found myself only one who came to the ceremony on time, the rest of my friend are coming late and by time everyone arrived and finished taking a photo it was around 4PM. and went to restaurant after for lunch. I was thinking about maybe just drop the shopping plan and just go tomorrow because I’m kind of tired already then like usual, another unexpected thing came up. Few of my friends want to go shopping at Siam Square so they ask me to get in a cab with them and they will give me a ride to the mall. I was like what the heck, I still can do it might need to pick up pace while searching for store at the mall and buy monitor before they close (they usually close around 7PM).

When I thought everything are going to be fine, then again some stupid thing came up to slow me down, this time was a rain, really heavy rain actually. We struck in the cab for probably an hour (I fell asleep and woke and we still in middle of bad traffic jam) by time I arrived the mall it was almost 6.30PM, I came so far to give up! so I rush to store that I usually buy stuff from. I usually spend time looking for store with the cheapest price and decently reputation but not this time, store I went to is called J.I.B they usually sell stuff for a little higher price but they also have very good customer support and reputation so to save time I just go with them.

I spent another 30 minutes to test the monitor and check for dead pixel and before I left I realize I have to buy a new UPS too, so now I have to carry both monitor and UPS back to sky-train station which is basically few bus stops away, drag myself back to parking lot and drove home. What a though day -_-

Here is link to web albums of graduated ceremony if any one interest, http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/JugjunG/ChulaGraduationPre

This is my favorite one