I got my 2 x Dell 24" monitors... they're very very nice; charts look fantastic on them, and being widescreen, I can show an even greater timeframe for each chart than I previously could on my old 4:3 apsect ratio monitors. And not a single dead pixel on either one of them. I'd highly recommend these to anyone with video cards that have the grunt to drive them!
Of course now I'll have to go and buy a bigger desk!
Dell's big sale finishes at the end of the month, I believe, and now is a great time to pickup their monitors at great prices. Although, it seems as soon as one sale ends, another one starts, so if you miss out, it's probably not going to be long before you can pick the monitors up again at the cheaper prices.
My new PC arrived last Friday, it was purchased from
Plus Corporation in Sydney. There were some supply problems with the case I wanted and it looked like I would have to wait until the second week in May to get the case as the distributor was completely out of stock. I wasn't too happy about waiting that long and Plus Corporation bent over backwards to get it to me sooner... they rang around other resellers all over the country to try and find someone who had one in stock that they could buy for me, and eventually tracked one down and paid retail price for it so they could supply the PC to me in a timely manner. They've offered exemplary customer service all the way through the purchase process and I would highly recommend them to anyone after a new PC, or any other computer-related parts.
The PC was shipped via Star Track Express. When it arrived, I excitedly opened the box and took it out, only to discover that one of the side panels was half off, and the tray the motherboard sits on had partly slid out. Further inspection caused my excitement to turn to extreme disappointment as I discovered that the machine had been dropped, obviously from a great height. The CPU was damaged, the hard drives were damaged, the case was damaged and many other parts were also damaged. All up, there was about $3,000 worth of damage to the machine. I was certainly glad I'd spent the $160 on freight insurance, but I'm pretty pissed off that I've had to return the machine and now have to wait until it can be assessed, repaired and freighted back to me.
The machine was well packaged and literally covered with "Fragile - Handle with Care" stickers and the consignment note also stated the same. If you're having something fragile delivered by courier, and have a choice of carrier, DO NOT choose Star Track Express. When the courier driver arrived at my house, he drove onto my lawn and basically dumped the heavy boxes onto the grass and expected me to carry each of them to the house... despite having a trolley sitting in his van. I thought he would have at least helped by carrying one of the boxes to the house. His only comment the whole time was, "They're heavy today".
Moral of the story is make sure you pay the extra for freight insurance if you're having anything of value sent by courier, because although we hope we'll never need to claim on the insurances we pay for, when we do have to, it can make an impossible situation at least bearable.
The Dell monitors were carried by Australian Air Express, and the driver did bring those all the way to my front door. They're a great courier company and I would recommend them as highly as I recommend
Plus Corporation.