by socheat on Tue Dec 19, 2006 1:40 pm
It's been said that most dead pixels will be discovered within the first few weeks of the monitor and, beyond that, rarely will a pixel ever go dead/stuck on you during the warranty period. Obviously, everyone's experience will vary, but I've found this to be true for me. None of the other LCD's I've had have suddenly cropped up w/ a dead pixel after years of use. I actually had a single stuck pixel (red) on one of my laptops which eventually went away after about a week.
Over the past 8 years or so, I've owned a 15" Viewsonic LCD, two 19" Samsungs, and four 20" Samsungs. The only dead pixels I had were only on the last 20" Samsung I bought this past October, and I noticed it immediately after setting up.
I literally called them the same day it arrived, and their policy is if you have a defect of any kind, reported within the first 30 days, they will replace it with a brand new one for free. And they cover shipping both ways, so I didn't even have to return it to ZipZoomFly and pay my own shipping. There was a slight fiasco with Samsung about stock and miscommunication that I won't get in to, but it's been sorted out and I'm now waiting for my replacement to arrive. They never asked how many dead pixels there were or anything (presumably because I reported the problem immediately).
I would think if you went with a major LCD manufacturer/vendor (Dell, Viewsonic, Samsung, etc), you'd have the same sort of guarantees available to you. Sure, you'd be paying a bit more, but you'd also be buying that extra bit of customer service/"insurance" when things go wrong.