🚀 go-pugleaf

mikc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Mike Coughlin) wrote:
>In article <4emegc$f99@shellx.best.com>,
>Bryan Levin <bryan@shellx.best.com> wrote:
>>Steve Burnett (sburn@well.sf.ca.us) wrote:
>>> Bill Dorsey <dorsey> writes:
> 
>>> >If you have a monitor that needs repair, I suggest avoiding Monitor
>>> >Express in Santa Clara.  I spoke with them on the telephone about
>>> >repairing my 19" Sony monitor 
>                    ^^^^
>>> >The funny thing is that I had mentioned that it was a Sun
>>> >monitor on the telephone                              ^^^^
> 
>>> So what did you -really- tell them on the phone ?  Sounds like a failure 
>>> to communicate here.  I've had great success with Monitor Express.  I 
>>> hate to see them get trashed in public over mis-communication.
> 
>>yeah, but aren't all (modern) sun monitors made by sony (ie, trinitrons)?
>
>    Sun monitors might be made by Sony, but there is a big difference
>if you want to get them repaired. Sun's policy is to make repairing the
>monitors with their name on them as difficult and expensive as
>possible. Sony is not allowed to supply repair manuals for the monitors
>they make for Sun by their OEM contract with Sun. Only a few monitor
>repair technicians are qualified to repair Sun monitors, and they
>charge extra to compensate for the trouble they have to go thru to get
>repair information. You are very lucky if you live near enough someone
>who knows how to repair Sun monitors so that you can cart the monitor
>to the shop yourself. The necessary shipping charges from most places
>would be so high that it is often cheaper to buy a used working Sun
>monitor instead of sending it off for repair.
>
This is simply untrue.  I spoke with five different shops picked out of
the yellow pages all within an easy drive of the south SF Bay Area.  I
told every one of them I had a 19" Sony color monitor made for a Sun
workstation (how could they repair the monitor if they only had the
equipment to drive a PC monitor?).  Four out of five of them said they
repaired Sun monitors all the time.  All of them agreed to repair the
monitor if I wanted.  Three of the shops quoted flat-rate prices
for the repair of $250 or less (unless it was the picture tube or
flyback transformer).  Given that a 19" Sony triniton for the Sun is
going for a street price of around $700 these days, I'd say it's well
worthwhile to have the monitor repaired rather than simply replacing it.

Perhaps when you said "qualified to repair Sun monitors" you meant only
"authorized" Sun-monitor repair places.  I don't think any of the places I
talked to are authorized by Sun (or Sony) to repair their monitors.  That
would only be important to me if the monitor were still under warranty
(which it isn't).

--
Bill Dorsey
dorsey@engr.sgi.com